?S.«4«J>iJ?i 




Class,/ // /3 4o 



Book 



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Copyright N^_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



,,j,»«lO««~j. 




WASHINGTON IRVING. 



REPRESENTATIVE ESSAYS 



SELECTED FROM THE SERIES OF "PROSE MASTER- 
PIECES FROM THE MODERN ESSAYISTS." 



COMPRISING 



TWELVE UNABRIDGED ESSAYS BY IRVING, LAMB, DE QUINCEY, 

EMERSON, ARNOLD, MORLEY, LOWELL, CARLYLE, 

MACAULAY, FROUDE, FREEMAN AND 

GLADSTONE. 



^^^ 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS 

^\]t Unicfecrbocfter Press 

1885 






COPYRIGHT BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 



r'y 



Press of • 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
New York. 



PREFACE. 



The present volume has been prepared for the purpose more 
particularly of meeting the requirements of students and teach- 
ers who were not in a position to use advantageously the full 
series of Essays presented in the set of " Prose Masterpieces 
from the Modern Essayists." 

The purpose of the " Prose Masterpieces " was stated by the 
editor to be, to bring together such productions of the great 
modern writers of English prose as should not only present 
good specimens of English style, but should also be fairly char- 
acteristic of the methods of thought and manner of expression 
of the several writers. 

The present selection comprises twelve out of the twenty 
papers given in the original set, those contributions having been 
omitted which seemed less likely to prove of interest for younger 
readers. 

As in the larger series, only complete essays are given, in 
which the thoughts and arguments of the writers on the several 
subjects considered, find their full expression. 

The editor believes that the selections presented, can safely 

be recommended to students as specimens of effective literary 

expression and of finished literary style. 

G. H. p. 



CONTENTS, 



^ PAGE 

The Mutability of Literature. By Washington Irving . . i 

Imperfect Sympathies. By Charles Lamb 15 '^ 

Conversation. By Thomas De Quincey 26 ^' 

Compensation. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 57 

Sweetness and Light. By Matthew Arnold 82 ^ 

On Popular Culture. By John Morley 114 - 

On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners. By James R,us- 

SELL Lowell 145 

On History. By Thomas Carlyle 176 / 

History. By Thomas Babington Macaulay 192 -^ 

The Science of History. By James Anthony Froude . . . 250 

Race and Language. By Edward A. Freeman. ...... 2S5 

Kin Beyond Sea. By William Ewart Gladstone 349 




THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. 



A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 



y 



BY WASHINGTON IRVING. 
(Born 1783, Died 1859.) 




I know that all beneath the moon decays, 
And what by mortals in this world is brought, 
In time's great period shall return to naught. 

I know that all the muse's heavenly lays. 
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought, 
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought ; 

That there is nothing lighter than mere praise. 

Drummond of Hawthornden. 

HERE are certain half-dreaming moods of mind, in 
wliich we naturally steal away from noise and glare, 
and seek some quiet haunt, where we may indulge 
our reveries and build our air-castles undisturbed. In 
such a mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of West- 
•minster Abbey, enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which 
one is apt to dignify with the name of reflection ; when suddenly 
an interruption of madcap boys from Westminster School, play- 
ing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of the place, 
making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with 
their merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by 
penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and 



2 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library. 
He conducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling 
sculpture of former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage 
leading to the chapter-house and the chamber in which dooms- 
day-book is deposited. Just within the passage is a small door 
on the left. To this the verger applied a key ; it was double- 
locked, and opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. 
We now ascended a dark, narrow staircase, and, passing 
through a second door, entered the library. 

I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by 
massive joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a 
row of Gothic windows at a considerable height from the floor, 
and which apparently opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. 
An ancient picture of some reverend dignitary of the church in 
his robes hung over the fireplace. Around the hall and in a 
small gallery were the books, arranged in carved oaken cases. 
They consisted principally of old polemical writers, and were 
much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the 
•library was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an 
inkstand without ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. 
The place seemed fitted for quiet study and profound medita- 
tion. It was buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey, 
and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only hear 
now .and then the shouts of the schoolboys faintly swelling 
from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers, 
echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the 
shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died 
away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned 
through the dusky hall. 



THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. 3 

I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in 
parchment, with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in 
a venerable elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was 
beguiled by the solemn monastic air, and lifeless quiet of the 
place, into a train of musing. As I looked around upon the old 
volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves, 
and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but 
consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where authors, 
like mummies, are piously entombed, and left to blacken and 
moulder in dusty oblivion. 

How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust 
aside with such indifference, cost some aching head ! how many 
weary days ! how many sleepless nights ! How have their 
authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters ; 
shut themselves up from the face of man, and the still more 
blessed face of nature ; and devoted themselves to painful 
research and intense reflection ! And all for what ? to occupy 
an inch of dusty shelf, — to have the title of their works read 
now and then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman or 
casual straggler like myself ; and in another age to be lost, 
even to remembrance. Such is the amount of this boasted 
immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local sound ; like the 
tone of that bell which has just tolled among these tow^ers, 
filling the ear for a moment — lingering transiently in echo — 
and then passing away like a thing that was not ! 

While I sat half murmuring, half meditating these unprofit- 
able speculations, with my head resting on my hand, I was 
thrumming with the other hand upon the quarto, until I acci- 
dentally loosened the clasps ; when, to my utter astonishment. 



4 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

the little book gave two or three yawns, like one awaking from 
a deep sleep ; then a husky hem ; and at length began to talk. 
At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much 
troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven 
across it ; and having probably contracted a cold from long 
exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. In a short 
time, however, it became more distinct, and I soon found it an 
exceedingly fluent, conversable little tome. Its language, to be 
sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation, 
what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous ; but I 
shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern 
parlance- 
It began with railings about the neglect of the world — about 
merit being suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such 
commonplace topics of literary repining, and complained bitterly 
that it had not been opened for more than two centuries. That 
the dean only looked now and then into the library, sometimes 
took down a volume or two, trifled with them for a few moments, 
and then returned them to their shelves. " What a plague do 
they mean," said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was 
somewhat choleric, — " what a plague do they mean by keeping 
several thousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a 
set of old vergers, like so many beauties in a harem, merely to 
be looked at now and then by the dean ? Books were written 
to give pleasure and to be enjo3'ed ; and I would have a rule 
passed that the dean should pay each of us a visit at least once 
a year ; or, if he is not equal to the task, let them once in a while 
turn loose the whole School of Westminster am.ong us, that at 
any rate we may now and then have an airing." 



THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. 5 

" Softly, my worthy friend," replied I ; " you are not aware 
how much better you are off than most books of your genera- 
tion. By being stored away in this ancient library, you are like 
the treasured remains of those saints and monarchs which lie 
enshrined iu the adjoining chapels ; while the remains of your 
contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary course of nature, have 
long since returned to dust." 

" Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big, 
'* I was written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an 
abbey. I was intended to circulate from hand to hand, like 
other great contemporary works ; but here have I been clasped 
up for more than two centuries, and might have silently fallen a 
prey to these worms that are playing the very vengeance with my 
intestines, if you had not by chance given me an opportunity of 
uttering a few last words before I go to pieces." 

" My good friend," rejoined I, " had you been left to the cir- 
culation of which you speak, you would long ere this have been 
no more. To judge from your physiognomy, you are now well 
stricken in years : very few of your contemporaries can be at 
present in existence ; and those few owe their longevity to being 
immured like yourself in old libraries ; which, suffer me to add, 
instead of likening to harems, you might more properly and 
gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to relig- 
ious establishments, for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and 
where, by quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure 
to an amazingly good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your 
contemporaries as if in circulation, — where do we meet with 
their works ? What do we hear of Robert Groteste, of Lincoln ? 
No one could have toiled harder than he for immortality. He 



6 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He built, 
as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name ; but, alas ! 
the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments are 
scattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed 
even by the antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cam- 
brensis, the historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and 
poet? He declined two bishoprics, that he might shut himself 
up and write for posterity : but posterity never inquires after his 
labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon, who, besides a learned 
history of England, wrote a treatise on the contempt of the 
world, which the world has revenged by forgetting him ? What 
is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age in 
classical composition ? Of his three great heroic poems one is 
lost forever, excepting a mere fragment ; the others are known 
only to a few of the curious in literature ; and as to his love- 
verses and epigrams, they have entirely disappeared. What is 
in current use of John Wallis, the Franciscan, who acquired the 
name of the tree of life ? Of William of Malmsbury ; of Simeon 
of Durham ; of Benedict of Peterborough ; of John Hanvill of 

St. Albans ; of " 

"Prithee, friend," cried the quarto, in a testy tone, "how old 
do 3'ou think me ? You are talking of authors that lived long 
before my time, and wrote either in Latin or French, so that 
they in a manner expatriated themselves, and deserved to be 
forgotten^ ; but I, sir, was ushered into the world from the press 

1 In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great delyte to endite, and 
have many noble thinges f iilfilde, but cartes there ben some that speaken their poisye in 
French, of which speche the Frenchmen have as good a fantasye as we have in heary- 
ing of Frenchmen's Englishe. — Chaucer's Testament of Love. 



• THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. J 

of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was written in my own 
native tongue, at a time wlien the language had become fixed ; 
and, indeed, I was considered a model of pure and elegant 
English." 

(I should observe that these remarks were couched in such 
intolerably antiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty 
in rendering them into modern phraseology.) 

"I cry your mercy," said I, " for mistaking your age; but it 
matters little : almost all the writers of your time have likewise 
passed into forgetfulness ; and De Worde's publications are 
mere literary rarities among book-collectors. The purity and 
stability of language, too, on which you found your claims to 
perpetuity, have been the fallacious dependence of authors of 
every age, even back to the times of the worthy Robert of Glou- 
cester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.'^ 
Even now many talk of Spenser's ' Well of pure English unde- 
filed ' as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain- 
head, and was not rather a mere confluence of various tongues, 
perpetually subject to changes and intermixtures. It is this 
which has made English literature so extremely mutable, and the 
reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless thought can be 
committed to something more permanent and unchangeable than 
such a medium, even thought must share the fate of everything 



1 Holinshed, in his Chronicle, observes : "Afterwards, also, by deligent travell of 
Geffry Chaucer and of John Gowre, in the time of Richard the Second, and after them 
of John Scogan and John Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was brought to an 
excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfection until 
the tiire of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and 
sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully accomplished the ornature of the same, 
to their great praise and immortal commendation. 



8 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check upon 
the vanity and exultation of the most popular v^riter. He finds 
the language in which he has embarked his fame gradually alter- 
ing, and subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of 
fashion. He looks back and beholds the early authors of his 
country, once the favorites of their day, supplanted by modern 
writers. A few short ages have covered them with obscurity, 
and their merits can only be relished by the quaint taste of the 
bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be the fate of his 
own work, which, however it maybe admired in its day, and held 
up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow anti- 
quated and obsolete ; until it shall become almost as unintelligi- 
ble in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk, or one of those 
Runic inscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary. I 
declare," added I, with some emotion, " when I contemplate a 
modern library, filled with new works, in all the bravery of rich 
gilding and binding, I feel disposed to sit down and weep ; like 
the good Xerxes, when he surveyed his army, pranked out in all 
the splendor of military array, and reflected that in one hundred 
years not one of them would be in existence ! " 

" Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, " I see how it 
is ; these modern scribblers have superseded all the good old 
authors. I suppose nothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip 
Sydney's'' Arcadia,' Sackville's stately plays, and 'Mirror for 
Magistrates,' or the fine-spun euphuisms of the ' unparalleled 
John Lyly.' " 

"There you are again mistaken," said I ; "the writers whom 
you suppose in vogue, because they happened to be so when you 
were last in circulation, have long since had their day. Sir 



THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. 9 

Philip Sydney's 'Arcadia,' the immortality of which was so 
fondly predicted by his admirers,^ and which, in truth, is full of 
noble thoughts, delicate images, and graceful turns of language, 
is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville has strutted into 
obscurity ; and even Lyly, though his writings were once the 
delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is 
now scarcely known even by name. A whole crowd of authors 
who wrote and wrangled at the time, have* likewise gone down, 
with all their writings and their controversies. Wave after wave 
of succeeding literature has rolled over them, until they are 
buried so deep, that it is only now and then that some industri- 
ous diver after fragments of antiquity brings up a specimen for 
the gratification of the curious. 

"For my part," I continued, "I consider this mutability of 
language a wise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the 
world at large, and of authors in particular. To reason from 
analogy, we daily behold the varied and beautiful tribes of vege- 
tables springing up, flourishing, adorning the fields for a short 
time, and then fading into dust, to make way for their succes- 
sors. Were not this the case, the fecundity of nature would be 
a grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groan with 
rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangled 
wilderness. In like manner the works of genius and learning 
decline, and make way for subsequent productions. Language 



1 Live ever sweete booke ; the simple image of his gentle witt. and the golden-pillar 
of his noble courage ; and ever notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary 
of eloquence, the breath of the muses, the honey-bee of the daintyest flowers of witt 
and arte, the pith of morale and intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, 
the tonge of Suada in the chamber, the sprite of Practise in esse, and the paragon of 
excellency in print. — Harvey Pierce's Supererogation. 



lO WASHINGTON IRVING. 

gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors 
who have flourished their allotted time ; otherwise, the creative 
powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind 
would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of litera- 
ture. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive 
multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which 
was a slow and laborious operation ; they were written either on 
parchment, which was expensive, so that one work was often 
erased to make way for another; or on papyrus, which was 
fragile and extremely perishable. Authorship was a limited and 
unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by monks in the leisure and 
solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation of manuscripts 
was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely to monas- 
teries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be 
owing that we have not been inundated by the intellect of an- 
tiquity ; that the fountains of thought have not been broken up, 
and modern genius drowned in the deluge. But the inventions 
of paper and the press have put an end to all these restraints. 
They have made everyone a writer, and enabled every mind to 
pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole intellec- 
tual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of 
literature has swollen into a torrent — augmented into a river — 
expanded into a sea. A few centuries since, five or six hundred 
manuscripts constituted a great library ; but what would you say 
to libraries such as actually exist, containing three or four hun- 
dred thousand volumes ; legions of authors at the same time 
busy ; and the press going on with activity, to double and quad- 
ruple the number. Unless some unforeseen mortality should 
break out among the progeny of the Muse, now that she has 



THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. II 

become so prolific, I tremble for posterity. I fear the mere 
fluctuation of language will not be sufficient. Criticism may do 
much. It increases with the increase of literature, and resembles 
one of those salutary checks on population spoken of by econo- 
mists. All possible encouragement, therefore, should be given 
to the growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in 
vain ; let criticism do what it may, writers will write, printers 
will print, and the world will inevitably be overstocked with 
good books. It will soon be the employment of a lifetime 
merely to learn their names. Many a man of passable informa- 
tion, at the present day, reads scarcely anything but reviews ; 
and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a 
mere walking catalogue." 

"My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most 
drearily in my face, " excuse my interrupting you, but I per- 
ceive you are rather given to prose. I would ask the fate of an 
author who was making some noise just as I left the world. 
His reputation, however, was considered quite temporary. The 
learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor, half- 
educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing of Greek, 
and had been obliged to run the country for deer-stealing. I 
think his name was Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into 
oblivion." 

"On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that 
the literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond 
the ordinary term of English literature. There rise authors 
now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of lan- 
guage, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging 
principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that 



12 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

we sometimes see on the banks of a stream ; which, by their 
vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and 
laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the 
soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing 
current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and, perhaps, 
worthless weed, to perpetuity. Such is the case with Shake- 
speare, whom we behold defying the encroachments of time, 
retaining in modern use the language and literature of his 
day, and giving duration to many an indifferent author, merely 
from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, I grieve to 
say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole form is 
overrun by a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering 
vines and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds 
them." 

Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, 
until at length he broke out in a plethoric fit of laughter that 
had well-nigh choked him, by reason of his excessive corpu- 
lency. " Mighty well ! " cried he, as soon as he could recover 
breath; "mighty well! and so you would persuade me that the 
literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a vagabond deer- 
stealer ! by a man without learning ! by a poet, forsooth — a 
poet ! " And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter. 

I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness, which, 
however,"! pardoned on account of his having flourished in a 
less polished age. I determined, nevertheless, not to give up 
my point. 

" Yes," resumed I, positively, " a poet ; for of all writers he 
has the best chance for immortality. Others may write from 
the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always 



THE MUTABILITY OF LITER A TURE. 



13 



understand him. He is the faithful portrayer of nature, whose 
features are always the same, and always interesting. Prose- 
writers are voluminous and unwieldy; their pages are crowded 
\vith commonplaces, and their thoughts expanded into tedious- 
ness. But with the true poet every thing is terse, touching, or 
brilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest lan- 
guage. He illustrates them by everything that he sees most 
striking in nature and art. He enriches them by pictures of 
human life, such as it is passing before him. His writings, 
therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I may use the phrase, 
of the age in which he lives. They are caskets which enclose 
within a small compass the wealth of the language, — its family 
jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to poster- 
ity. The setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require 
now and then to be renewed, as in the case of Chaucer ; but the 
brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems continue unaltered. 
Cast a look back over the long reach of literary history. What 
vast valleys of dulness, filled with monkish legends and acade- 
mical controversies ! what bogs of theological speculations ! what 
dreary wastes of metaphysics ! Here and there only do we 
behold the heaven-illuminated bards, elevated like beacons on 
their widely separate heights, to transmit the pure light of poeti- 
cal intelligence from age to age." ^ 

1 Thorow earth and waters deepe, 

The pen by skill doth passe ; 
And featly nyps the worldes abuse, 

And shoes lis in a glasse 
The vertii and the vice 

Of every wight alyve : 
The honey ~comb that bee doth make 

Is not so sweet in hyve, 



14 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the 
poets of the day, when the sudden opening of the door caused 
me to turn my head. It was the verger who came to inform me 
that it was time to close the library. I sought to have a parting 
word with the quarto, but the worthy little tome was silent ; the 
clasps were closed ; and it looked perfectly unconscious of all 
that had passed. I have been to the library two or three times 
since, and have endeavored to draw it into further conversation, 
but in vain ; and whether all this rambling colloquy actually 
took place, or whether it was another of those odd day-dreams 
to which I am subject, I have never to this moment been able 
to discover. 

As are the golden leves 

That drop from poet's head ! 
Which doth surmount our common talke 

As farre as dross doth lead. 

Chiirchya7-d. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



BY CHARLES LAMB. 
(Born 1775, Died 1S34.) 



" I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and S}'mpathizeth with all things ; 
I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies 
do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or 
Dutch." — Relisiio Medici. 



■>---^^^r ^^a^ 



HAT the author of the " Religio Medici," mounted 
upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about 
notional and conjectural essences — in whose cate- 
gories of Being the possible took the upper hand of 
the actual — should have overlooked the impertinent individual- 
ities of such poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be 
admired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of 
animals he should have condescended to distinguish that species 
at all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of 
my activities — 

Standing on earth, nor rapt above the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national or 
individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indif- 
ferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to me a 
matter of taste or distaste; or when once it becomes indifferent, 
it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle 

15 



1 6 CHARLES LAMB. 

of prejudices — made up of likings and dislikings — the veriest 
thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, 
I hope it may be said of me that I am a lover of my species. 
I can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel toward all 
equally. The more purely-English word that expresses sympa- 
thy, will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a 
worthy man, who upon another account, cannot be my mate or 
fellow. I cannot like all people alike.^ 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am 
obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot 
like me — and, in truth, I never knew one of that nation who 
attempted to do it. There is something more plain and ingenu- 
ous in their mode of proceeding. We know one another at first 
sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects (under which 

1 I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect sympathies. 
To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy. There may be indivi- 
duals born and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same 
sphere cannot hold them. I have met with nxy moral antipodes, and can believe the 
story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and 

instantly fighting. 

We by proof find there should be 
'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
•• Yet notwithstanding, hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchie of Angels," and he subjoins a curious 
story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand of 
Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other reason for the deed but an invet- 
erate antipathy which he had taken to the first sight of the king. 

The cause which to that act compell'd him 
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 1 7 

mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution is essen- 
tially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I 
allude to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in their 
ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their intellec- 
tual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. 
They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. 
She presents no full front to them — a feature of side-face 
at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essays 
at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a 
little game peradventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more 
robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them 
is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting : waxing, and 
again waning. Their conversation is accordingly. They will 
throw out a random word in or out of season, and be content to 
let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always as if 
they were upon their oath — but must be understood, speaking 
or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature 
a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. 
They delight to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, 
without waiting for their full development. They are no syste- 
matizers, and would but err more by attempting it. Their 
minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a 
true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon 
quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You 
are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth — if, indeed, 
they do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles of 
clock-work. You never catch his mind in an undress. He 
never hints or suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas 



1 8 CHARLES LAMB. 

in perfect order and completeness. He brings his total wealth 
into company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always 
about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering something in 
your presence to share it with you, before he quite knows 
whether it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to any- 
thing that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You never 
witness his first apprehension of a thing. His understanding is 
always at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early 
streaks. He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Sumiises, 
guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial 
illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no place in 
his brain or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls 
upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infi- 
del — he has none either. Between the affirmative and the neg- 
ative there is no border-land with him. You cannot hover with 
him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a prob- 
able argument. He always keeps the path. You cannot make 
excursions with him — for he sets you right. His taste never 
fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot compromise, 
or understand middle actions. There can be but a right and a 
wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have 
the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the square with 
him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an ene- 
my's country. " A healthy book ? '' said one of his countrymen 
to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to " John 
Buncle," — "did I catch rightly what you said? I have heard 
of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not 
see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above 
all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Cale- 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 1 9 

donian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are un- 
liappily blessed with a vein of it. Remember you are upon 
your oath. 1 have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo 

da Vinci, which I was showing olT to Mr. . After he had 

examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my 
BEAUTY (a foolish name it goes by among my friends) — when he 
very gravely assured me, that " he had considerable respect for 
my character and talents " (so he was pleased to say), " but had 
not given himself much thought about the degree of my per- 
sonal pretensions." The misconception staggered me, but did 
not seem much to disconcert him. Persons of this nation are 
particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. 
They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do in- 
deed appear to have such a love for truth (as if, like virtue, it 
were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable, 
whether the proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, 
or such as is impossible to become a subject of disputation. I 
was present not long since at a party of North Britons, where a 
son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly ex- 
pression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the 
father instead of the son — when four of them started up at 
once to inform me, that " that was impossible, because he was 
dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they 
could conceive. Swift has hit ofif this part of their character, 
namely, their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an illi- 
berality that necessarily confines the passage to the margin.^ 



• There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves, and enter- 
tain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at all out of the road of 
such common incidents as happen every day ; and this I have observed more fre- 



20 CHARLES LAMB, 

The tediousness of these people is certainly provoking. I won- 
der if they ever tire one another ? In my early life I had a 
passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes 
foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen by 
expressing it. But I have always found that a true Scot resents 
your admiration of his compatriot, even more than he would 
your contempt of him. The latter he imputes to your " imper- 
fect acquaintance with many of the words which he uses ; " and 
the same objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose 
that you can admire him. Thompson they seem to have forgot- 
ten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his 
delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first introduc- 
tion to our metropolis. Speak of Smollett as a great genius, 
and they will retort upon you Hume's History compared with his 
continuation of it. What if the historian had continued Humph- 
rey Clinker ? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are a 
piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is 
in its nonage. They date be3'ond the pyramids. But I should 
not care to be in habits of familiar intercourse with any of that 
nation. I confess that I have not the nerves to enter their 
synagogues. Old prejudices cling about me. I cannot shake 
off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, con- 
tempt, alid hate, on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimu- 
lation, and hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, 

quently among the Scotch than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the 
minutest circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a 
little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gestures pecu- 
liar to that country, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints Toward an Essay on Conver- 
satio7i. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 21 

must and ought to affect the blood of the children, I cannot 
believe it can run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, 
such as candor, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can 
close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is 
nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful on ' Change 
— for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as all are 
beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the 
approximation of Jew and Christian, which has become so 
fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- 
thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like to see 
the Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in awkward 
postures of an affected civility. If they are converted, why do 
they not come over to us altogether ? Why keep up a form of 
separation when the life of it is fled ? If they can sit with us at 
table, why do they kick at our cookery ? I do not understand 
these half-convertites. Jews christianizing — Christians judaiz- 
ing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a 
more confounding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The 

spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative. B would 

have been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his 
forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face which nature 

meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong in 

him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the 
shibboleth. How it breaks out when he sings, " The children 
of Israel passed through the Red Sea ! " The auditors, for the 
moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks 

in triumph. There is no mistaking him. B has a strong 

expression of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by 
his sinsfing:. The foundation of his vocal excellence is sense. 



22 CHARLES LAMB. 

He sings with understanding, as Kenible delivered dialogue. 
He would sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate 
character to each prohibition. His nation in general have not 
over-sensible countenances. How should they ? — but you 
seldom see a silly expression among them. Gain, and the 
pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard of an 
idiot being born among them. Some admire the Jewish female 
physiognomy. I admire it but with trembling. Jael had those 
full, dark, inscrutable eyes. 

In the negro countenance you will often meet with strong 
traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness toward 
some of these faces — or rather masks — that have looked out 
kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets and 
highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these " images 
of God cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate with 
them, to share my meals and my good nights with them — 
because they are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the 
Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day 
when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am 
ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice 
of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and 
taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot like the 
Quakers (as Desdemona would say) "to live with them." I 
am all over sophisticated — with humors, fancies, craving hourly 
sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, 
scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whimwhams, which 
their simpler taste can do without. I should starve at their 
primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



23 



which (according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel ; my 
gusto too excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to return 
to a question put to them may be explained, I think, without the 
vulgar assumption that they are more given to evasion and 
equivocating than other people. They naturally look to their 
words more carefully, and are more cautious of committing 
themselves. They have a peculiar character to keep up on this 
head. They stand in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker 
is by law exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resort- 
ing to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious 
antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the 
laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth, — the one 
applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the 
common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon 
the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common 
affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is ex- 
pected and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn coven- 
ant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear 
a person say, " You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon 
my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, 
short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind 
of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath- 
truth — by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. A 
Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation 
being received, upon the most sacred occasions, without any fur- 
ther test, stamps a value upon the words which he is to use upon 
the most indifferent topics of life. He looks to them naturally 



24 CHARLES LAMB. 

with more severity. You can have of him no more than his 
word. He knows if he is caught tripping in a casual expres- 
sion, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the invidious 
exemption. He knows that his syllables are weighed — and how 
far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted 
against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect answers, 
and a diverting of the question by honest means, might be illus- 
trated, and the practice justified, by a more sacred example than 
is proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable pres- 
ence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all contingen- 
cies, might be traced to this imposed self-watchfulness — if it did 
not seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of 
religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primi- 
tive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the 
violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking examina- 
tions. "You will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering 
your questions till midnight," said one of those upright justicers 
to Penn, who had been putting law cases with a puzzling sub- 
tlety. " Thereafter as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. 
The astonishing composure of this people is sometimes ludi- 
crously displayed in lighter instances. I was travelling in a 
stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest 
nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, 
where a fneal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before 
us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my 
way took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the 
eldest of my companions discovered that she had charged for 
both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clam- 
orous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 2$ 

part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady 
seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in with 
his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their 
money and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, in humble 
imitation, tendering mine — for the supper which I had taken. 
She would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly 
put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, 
the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the 
rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example 
of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. The 
steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine 
hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became 
after a time inaudible — and now my conscience, which the whim- 
sical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some 
twitches, I waited in the hope that some justification would be 
offered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of 
their conduct. To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped 
on the subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length 
the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neigh- 
bor, " Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House ? " 
and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as 
far as Exeter. 



CONVERSATION. 



■4/ 



BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
(Born 17S5, Died 1S59.) 




MONGST the arts connected with the elegancies of 
social life, in a degree which nobody denies, is the 
art of conversation ; but in a degree which almost 
everybody denies, if one may judge by their neglect 
of its simplest rules, this same art is not less connected with the 
uses of social life. Neither the luxury of conversation, nor the 
possible benefit of conversation, is to be under that rude admin- 
istration of it which generally prevails. Without an art, without 
some simple system of rules, gathered from experience of such 
contingencies as are most likely to mislead the practice, when 
left to its own guidance, no act of man nor effort accomplishes 
its purposes in perfection. The sagacious Greek would not so 
much as" drink a glass of wine amongst a few friends without a 
systematic art to guide him, and a regular form of polity to 
control him, which art and which polity (begging Plato's 
pardon) were better than any of more ambitious aim in his 
" Republic." Every symposium had its set of rules, and vigor- 
ous they were ; had its own symposiarch to govern it, and a 
26 



CONVERSA TION. 2/ 

tyrant he was. Elected democratically, he became, when once 
installed, an autocrat not less despotic that the king of Persia. 
Purposes still more slight and fugitive have been organized into 
arts. Taking soup gracefully, under the difficulties opposed to 
it by a dinner dress at that time fashionable, was reared into an 
art about forty-five years ago by a Frenchman, who lectured 
upon it to ladies in London ; and the most brilliant duchess of 
that day was amongst his best pupils. Spitting — if the reader 
will pardon the mention of so gross a fact — was shown to be a 
very difficult art, and publicly prelected ujDon about the same 
time, in the same great capital. The professors in this faculty 
were the hackney-coachmen ; the pupils were gentlemen who 
paid a guinea each for three lessons ; the chief problem in this 
system of hydraulics being to throw the salivating column in a 
parabolic curve from the centre of Parliament Street, when 
driving four-in-hand, to the foot pavements, right and left, so as 
to alarm the consciences of guilty peripatetics on either side. 
The ultimate problem, which closed the cu7-riciilum of study, 
was held to lie in spitting round a corner ; when that was 
mastered, the pupil was entitled to his doctor's degree. End- 
less are the purposes of man, merely festal or merely comic, and 
aiming but at the momentary life of a cloud, which have earned 
for themselves the distinction and apparatus of a separate art. 
Yet for conversation, the great paramount purpose of social 
meetings, no art exists or has been attempted. 

That seems strange, but is not really so. A limited process 
submits readily to the limits of a technical system; but a process 
so unlimited as the interchange of thought, seems to reject 
them. And even, if an art of conversation were less unlimited, 



28 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

the means of carrying such an art 'into practical effect, amongst 
so vast a variety of minds, seem wanting. Yet again, perhaps, 
after all, this may rest on a mistake. What we begin by mis- 
judging is the particular phasis of conversation which brings it 
under the control of art and discipline. It is not in its relation 
to the intellect that conversation ever has been improved or will 
be improved primarily, but in its relation to manners. Has 
a man ever mixed with what in technical phrase is called " good 
company," meaning company in the highest degree polished, 
company which (being or 7iot being aristocratic as respects its 
composition) is aristocratic as respects the standard of its 
manners and usages? If he really has, and does not deceive 
himself from vanity or from pure inacquaintance with the world, 
in that case he must have remarked the large effect impressed 
upon the grace and upon the freedom of conversation by a few 
simple instincts of real good-breeding. Good-breeding — what 
is it ? There is no need in this place to answer that question 
comprehensively ; it is sufficient to say, that it is made up 
chiefly of negative elements ; that it shows itself far less in what 
it prescribes, than in what it forbids. Now, even under this 
limitation of the idea, the truth is, that more will be done for the 
benefit of conversation by the simple magic of good-manners 
(that is, chiefly by a system of forbearances), applied to the 
besetting, vices of social intercourse, than ever was or ca7i be 
done by all varieties of intellectual power assembled upon the 
same arena. Intellectual graces of the highest order may 
perish and confound each other when exercised in a spirit of 
ill-temper, or under the license of bad manners : whereas, very 
humble powers, when allowed to expand themselves colloquially 



CONVERSA TION. 



29 



in that genial freedom which ■ is possible only under the most 
absolute confidence in the self-restraint of your collocutors, 
accomplish their purpose to a certainty, if it be the ordinary 
purpose of liberal amusement, and have a chance of accom- 
plishing it even when this purpose is the more ambitous one 
of communicating knowledge, or exchanging new views upon 
truth. 

In my own early years, having been formed by nature too ex- 
clusively and morbidly for solitary thinking, I observed nothing. 
Seeming to have eyes, in reality I saw nothing. But it is a mat- 
ter of no very uncommon experience, that, whilst the mere ob- 
servers never become meditators, the mere meditators, on the 
other hand, may finally ripen into close observers. Strength 
of thinking, through long 3^ears, upon innumerable themes, will 
have the effect of disclosing a vast variety of questions, to 
which it soon becomes apparent that answers are lurking up and 
down the whole field of daily experience ; and thus an external 
experience which was slighted in youth, because it was a dark 
cipher that could be read into no meaning, a key that answered 
to no lock, gradually becomes interesting as it is found to yield 
one solution after another to problems that have independently 
matured in the mind. TJius, for instance, upon the special 
functions of conversation, upon its powers, its laws, its ordinary 
diseases, and their appropriate remedies, in youth I never be- 
stowed a thought or a care. I viewed it, not as one amongst 
the gay ornamental arts of the intellect, but as one amongst 
the dull necessities of business. Loving solitude too much, I 
understood too little the capacities of colloquial intercourse. 
And thus it is, though not for my reason, that most people 



30 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

estimate the intellectual relations of conversation. Let these, 
however, be what they may, one thing seemed undeniable — 
that this world talked a great deal too much. It would be 
better for all parties, if nine in every ten of the winged words 
flying about in this world (Homer's epea ptcroentd) had their 
feathers clipped amongst men, or even amongst women, who 
have a right to a larger allowance of words. Yet, as it was 
quite out of my power to persuade the world into any such 
self-denying reformation, it seemed equally out of the line of 
my duties to nourish any moral anxiety in that direction. To 
talk seemed then in the same category as to sleep; not an 
accomplishment, but a base physical infirmity. As a moralist, 
I really was culpably careless upon the whole subject. I cared 
as little what absurdities men practised in their vast tennis- 
courts of conversation, where the ball is flying backward and 
forward to no purpose forever, as what tricks Englishmen might 
play with their monstrous national debt. Yet at length what I 
disregarded on any principle of moral usefulness, I came to 
make an object of the profoundest interest on principles of art. 
Betting, in like manner, and wagering, which apparently had no 
moral value, and for that reason had been always slighted as 
inconsiderable arts (though, by the wa}', they always had one 
valuable use, namely, that of evading quarrels, since a bet 
summarily intercepts an altercation), rose suddenly into a philo- 
sophic rank, when successively Huyghens, the Bernoullis, and 
De Moivre, were led, by the suggestion of these trivial practices 
amongst men, to throw the light of a high mathematical analysis 
upon the whole doctrine of chances. ' Lord Bacon had been led 
to remark the capacities of conversation as an organ for sharp- 



CON VERS A TION. 3 1 

ening one particular mode of intellectual power. Circumstances, 
on the other hand, led me into remarking the special capacities 
of conversation, as an organ for absolutely creating another 
mode of power. Let a man have read, thought, studied, as 
much as he may, rarely will he reach his possible advantages as 
a ready man, unless he has exercised his powers much in conver- 
sation — that was Lord Bacon's idea. Now, this wise and useful 
remark points in a direction not objective, but subjective — that 
is, it does not promise any absolute extension to truth itself, but 
only some greater facilities to the man who expounds or diffuses 
the truth. Nothing will be done for truth objectively that would 
not at any rate be done, but subjectively it will be done with 
more fluency, and at less cost of exertion to the doer. On the 
contrary, my own growing reveries on the latent powers of con- 
versation (which, though a thing that then I hated, yet challen- 
ged at times unavoidably my attention) pointed to an absolute 
birth of new insight into the truth itself, as inseparable from the 
finer and more scientific exercise of the talking art. It would 
not be the brilliancy, the ease, or the adroitness of the expoun- 
der that would benefit, but the absolute interests of the thing 
expounded. A feeling dawned on me of a secret magic lurking 
in the peculiar life, velocities, and contagious ardor of conver- 
sation, quite separate from any which belonged to books; arming 
a man with new forces, and not merely with a new dexterity in 
wielding the old ones. I felt, and in this I could not be mis- 
taken, as too certainly it was a fact of my own experience, that 
in the electric kindling of life between two minds, and far less 
from the kindling natural to conflict (though that also is some- 
thing) than from the kindling through sympathy with the object 



32 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

discussed, in its momentary coruscation of shifting phases, there 
sometimes arise gUmpses and shy revelations of affinity, sugges- 
tion, rehition, analogy, that could not have been approached 
through any avenues of methodical study. Great organists find 
the same effect of inspiration, the same result of power creative 
and revealing, in the mere movement and velocity of their own 
voluntaries, like the heavenly wheels of Milton, throwing off 
fiery flakes and bickering flames ; these impromptu torrents of 
music create x?i-^\\xxow% fioriture, beyond all capacity in the artist 
to register, or afterward to imitate. The reader must be well 
aware that many philosophic instances exist where a change in 
the degree makes a change in the kind. Usually this is other- 
wise ; the prevailing rule is, that the principle subsists unaffected 
by any possible variation in the amount or degree of the force. 
But a large class of exceptions must have met the reader, though 
from want of a pencil he has improperly omitted to write them 
down in his pocket-book — cases, namely, where, upon passing 
beyond a certain point in the graduation, an alteration takes 
place suddenly in the kind of effect, a new direction is given to 
the power. Some illustration of this truth occurs in conversa- 
tion, where a velocity in the movement of thought is made 
possible (and often natural), greater than ever can arise in 
methodical books; and where, secondly, approximations are 
more obvious and easily effected between things too remote for 
a steadier contemplation. One remarkable evidence of a specific 
power lying hid in conversation may be seen in such writings as 
have moved by impulses most nearly resembling those of con- 
versation ; for instance, in those of Edmund Burke. For one 
moment, reader, pause upon the spectacle of two contrasted 



CONVERSATION. 33 

intellects, Burke's and Johnson's : one, an intellect essentially- 
going forward, governed by the very necessity of growth — by 
the law of motion in advance ; the latter, essentially an intellect 
retrogressive, retrospective, and throwing itself back on its own 
steps. This original difference was aided accidentally in Burke 
by the tendencies of political partisanship, which, both from 
moving amongst moving things and uncertainties, as compared 
with the more stationary aspects of moral philosophy, and also 
from its more fluctuating and fiery passions, must unavoidably 
reflect in greater life the tumultuary character of conversation. 
The result from these original differences of intellectual consti- 
tution, aided by these secondary differences of pursuit, is, that 
Dr. Johnson never, in any instance, grows a truth before your 
eyes, whilst in the act of delivering it, or moving toward it. All 
that he offers, up to the end of the chapter he had when he 
began. But to Burke, such was the prodigious elasticity of his 
thinking, equally in his conversation and in his writings, the 
mere act of movement became the principle or cause of move- 
ment. Motion propagated motion, and life threw off life. The 
very violence of a projectile, as thrown by him, caused it to 
rebound in fresh forms, fresh angles, splintering, coruscating, 
which gave out thoughts as new (and that would at the begin- 
ning have been as startling) to himself as they are to his reader. 
In this power, which might be illustrated largely from the writ- 
ings of Burke, is seen something allied to the powers of a 
prophetic seer, who is compelled oftentimes into seeing things 
as unexpected by himself as by others. Now, in conversation, 
considered as to its tendencies and capacities, there sleeps an 
intermitting spring of such sudden revelation, showing much of 



34 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

tJie same general character ; a power putting on a character 
essentially differing from the character worn by the power of 
books. 

If, then, in the colloquial commerce of thought, there lurked a 
power not shared by other modes of that great commerce, 
a power separate and sni generis, next it was apparent that a 
great art must exist somewhere, applicable to this power ; not in 
the pyramids, or in the tombs of Thebes, but in the unwrought 
quarries of men's minds, so many and so dark. There was an 
art missing. If an art, then an artist missing. If the art (as we 
say of foreign mails) were " due," then the artist was " due." 
How happened it that this great man never made his appear- 
ance ? But perhaps he had. Many people think Dr. Johnson 
the exemplar of conversational power. I think otherwise, for 
reasons which I shall soon explain, and far sooner I should 
look for such an exemplar in Burke. But neither Johnson nor 
Burke, however they might rank za powers, was the artist that I 
demanded. Burke valued not at all the reputation of a great 
performer in conversation ; he scarcely contemplated the skill 
as having a real existence ; and a man will never be an artist 
who does not value his art, or even recognize it as an object 
distinctly defined. Johnson, again, relied sturdily upon his 
natural powers for carrying him aggressively through all conver- 
sationaf occasions or difficulties that English society, from its 
known character and composition, could be supposed likely to 
bring forward, without caring for any art or system of rules that 
might give further effect to that power. If a man is str.ong 
enough to knock down ninety-nine in a hundred of all antago- 
nists, in spite of any advantages as to pugilistic science which 



CON VERS A TION. 3 5 

they may possess over himself, he is not likely to care for the 
improbable case of a hundredth man appearing with strength 
equal to his own, superadded to the utmost excess of that artifi- 
cial skill which is wanting in himself. Against such a contin- 
gency it is not worth while going to the cost of a regular pugil- 
istic training. Half a century might not bring up a case of 
actual call for its application. Or, if it did, for a single extra 
case of that nature, there would always be a resource in the 
extra (and, strictly speaking, foul) arts of kicking, scratching, 
pinching, and tearing hair. 

The conversational powers of Johnson were narrow in com- 
pass, however strong within their own essential limits. As a 
conditio sine qua non, he did not absolutely demand a personal 
contradictor by way of "stoker" to supply fuel and keep up his 
steam, but he demanded at least a subject teeming with elements 
of known contradictory opinion, whether linked to partisanship 
or not. His views of all things tended to negation, never to the 
positive and the creative. Hence may be explained a fact, 
which cannot have escaped any keen observer of those huge 
Johnsonian meinorabilia which we possess, namely, that the 
gyration of his flight upon any one question that ever came 
before him was so exceedingly brief. There was no process, 
no evolution, no movements of self-conflict or preparation; a 
word, a distinction, a pointed antithesis, and, above all, a new 
abstraction of the logic involved in some popular fallacy, or 
doubt, or prejudice, or problem, formed the utmost of his 
efforts. He dissipated some casual perplexity that had gath- 
ered in the eddies of conversation, but he contributed nothing 
to any weightier interest ; he unchoked a strangulated sewer in 



36 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

some blind alley, but what river is there that felt his cleansing 
power ? There is no man that can cite any single error which 
Dr. Johnson unmasked, or any important truth which he 
expanded. Nor is this extraordinary. Dr. Johnson had not 
within himself the fountain of such power, having not a brood- 
ing or naturally philosophic intellect. Philosophy in any 
acquired sense he had none. How else could it have happened 
that upon David Hartley, upon David Hume, upon Voltaire, 
upon Rousseau, the true or the false philosophy of his own day, 
beyond a personal sneer, founded upon some popular slander, 
he had nothing to say and said nothing ? A new world was 
moulding itself in Dr. Johnson's meridian hours, new genera- 
tions were ascending, and " other palms were won." Yet of 
all this the Doctor suspected nothing. Countrymen and con- 
temporaries of the Doctor's, brilliant men, but (as many think) 
trifling men, such as Horace Walpole and Lord Chesterfield, 
already in the middle of that eighteenth century, could read the 
signs of the great changes advancing, already started in horror 
from the portents which rose before them in Paris, like the 
procession of regal phantoms before Macbeth, and have left in 
their letters records undeniable (such as now read like Cassan- 
dra prophecies) that already they had noticed tremors in the 
ground below their feet, and sounds in the air, running before 
the great^convulsions under which Europe was destined to rock 
full thirty years later. Many instances, during the last war, 
showed us that in the frivolous dandy might often lurk the most 
fiery and accomplished of aides-de-camp ; and these cases show 
that men, in whom the world sees only elegant roues, some- 
times from carelessness, sometimes from want of opening for 



CONVERSATION. 37 

display, conceal qualities of penetrating sagacity, and a learned 
spirit of observation, such as may be looked for vainly in 
persons of more solemn and academic pretension. But there 
was a greater defect in Dr. Johnson, for purposes of conversa- 
tion, than merely want of eye for the social phenomena rising 
around him. He had no eye for such phenomena, because he 
had a somnolent want of interest in them ; and why ? because 
lie had little interest in man. Having no sympathy with human 
nature in its struggles, or faith in the progress of man, he could 
not be supposed to regard with much interest any forerunning 
symptoms of changes that to him were themselves indifferent. 
And the reason that he felt thus careless was the desponding 
taint in his blood. It is good to be of a melancholic tempera- 
ment, as all the ancient physiologists held, but only if the 
melancholy is balanced by fiery aspiring qualities, not when it 
gravitates essentially to the earth. Hence the drooping, des- 
ponding character, and the monotony of the estimate which Dr. 
Johnson applied to life. We were all, in his view, miserable, 
scrofulous wretches; the " strumous diathesis " was developed 
in our flesh, or soon would be ; and, but for his piety, which was 
the best indication of some greatness latent within him, he 
would have suggested to all mankind a nobler use for garters 
than any which regarded kne^s. In fact, I believe that, but 
for his piety, he would not only have counselled hanging in 
general, but hanged himself in particular. Now, this gloomy 
temperament, not as an occasional but as a permanent state, is 
fatal to the power of brilliant conversation, in so far as that 
power rests upon raising a continual succession of topics, and 
not merely of using with lifeless talent the topics offered by 



SS THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

others. Man is the central interest about which revolve all the 
fleeting phenomena of life ; these secondary interests demand 
the first ; and with the little knowledge about them which must 
follow from little care about them, there can be no salient 
fountain of conversational themes. Pectus — id est quod disertiim 
facit. From the heart, from an interest of love or hatred, of 
hope or care, springs all permanent eloquence ; and the elastic 
spring of conversation is gone, if the talker is a mere showy 
man of talent, pulling at an oar which he detests. 

What an index might be drawn up of subjects interesting to 
human nature, and suggested by the events of the Johnsonian 
period, upon which the Doctor ought to have talked, and must 
have talked if his interest in man had been catholic, but on 
which the Doctor is not recorded to have uttered one word! 
Visiting Paris once in his life, he applied himself diligently to 
the measuring — of what? Of gilt mouldings and diapered 
panels ! Yet books, it will be said, suggest topics as well as 
life, and the moving sceneries of life. And surely Dr. Johnson 
had this fund to draw upon ? No ; for though he had read 
much in a desultory way, he had studied nothing ^ ; and, 
without that sort of systematic reading, it is but a rare chance 
that books can be brought to bear effectually, and yet indirectly 

1 "//at/ siiidied nothing." — It may be doubted whether Dr. Johnson understood 
any one thing thoroughly, except Latin ; not that he understood even that with the 
elaborate and circumstantial accuracy required for the editing critically of a Latin 
classic. But if he had less than that, he also had more ; he possessed that language in 
a way that no extent of mere critical knowledge could confer. He wrote it genially, 
not as one translating into it painfully from English, but as one using it for his 
original organ of thinking. And in Latin verse he expressed him'jelf at times with the 
energy and freedom of a Roman. ' With Greek his acquaintance was far more slender. 



CONVERSA TION. 



39 



upon conversation ; while to make them directly and formally 
the subjects of discussion, presupposes either a learned audi- 
ence, or, if the audience is not so, much pedantry and much 
arrogrance in the talker. 



CONVERSATION. 

( Second Paper) . 

The flight of our human hours, not really more rapid at any 
one moment than another, yet oftentimes to our feelings seems 
more rapid, and this flight startles us like guilty things with a 
more affecting se/ise of its rapidity, when a distant church-clock 
strikes in the night-time ; or when, upon some solemn summer 
evening, the sun's disk, after settling for a minute with farewell 
horizontal rays, suddenly drops out of sight. The record of our 
loss in such a case seems to us the first intimation of its 
possibility ; as if we could not be made sensible that the hours 
were perishable until it is announced to us that already they 
have perished. We feel a perplexity of distress when that 
which seems to us the crudest of injuries, a robbery committed 
upon bur dearest possession by the conspiracy of the world 
outside, seems also as in part a robbery sanctioned by our own 
collusion. The world, and the customs of the world, never 
cease to levy taxes upon our time ; that is true, and so far the 
blame is not ours ; but the particular degree in which we suffer 
by this robbery depends much upon the weakness with which 
we ourselves become parties to the wrong, or the energy with 
which we resist it. Resisting or not, however, we are doomed 



40 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

to suffer a bitter pang as often as the irrecoverable flight of our 
time is brought home with keenness to our hearts. The spec- 
tacle of a lady floating over the sea in a boat, and waking 
suddenly from sleep to find her magnificent roi^es of pearl- 
necklace by some accident detached at one end from its 
fastenings, the loose string hanging down into the water, and 
pearl after pearl slipping off forever into the abyss, brings 
before us the sadness of the case. That particular pearl, which 
at the very moment is rolling off into the unsearchable deeps, 
carries its own separate reproach to the lady's heart. But it is 
more deeply reproachful as the representative of so many others, 
uncounted pearls, that have already been swallowed up irrecov- 
erably while she was yet sleeping, and of many besides that 
must follow before any remedy can be applied to what we may 
call this jewelly hemorrhage. A constant hemorrhage of the 
same kind is wasting our jewelly hours. A day has perished 
from our brief calendar of days, and that we could endure ; but 
this day is no more than the reiteration of many other daysj 
days counted by thousands, that have perished to the same 
extent and by the same unhappy means — namely, the evil 
usages of the world made effectual and ratified by our own 
lachete. Bitter is the upbraiding which we seem to hear from a 
secret monitor: "My friend, you make very free with your days; 
pray, how many do you expect to have ? What is your rental, 
as regards the total harvest of days which this life is likely to 
yield ? " Let us consider. Threescore years and ten produce a 
total sum of twenty-five thousand five hundred and fifty days ; to 
say nothing of some seventeen or eighteen more that will be 
payable to you as a homes on account of leap-years. Now, out 



CONVERSATION. 4 1 

of this total, one third must be deducted at a blow for a single 
item — namely, sleep. Next, on account of illness, of recreation, 
and the serious occupations spread over the surface of life, it 
will be little enough to deduct another third. Recollect also 
that twenty years will have gone from the earlier end of your 
life (namely, above seven thousand days) before you can have 
attained any skill or system, or any definite purpose, in the 
distribution of your time. Lastly, for that single item, which, 
among the Roman armies, was indicated by the technical 
phrase ^'■corpus curare,'' tendance on the animal necessities — 
namely, eating, drinking, washing, bathing, and exercise, deduct 
the smallest allowance consistent with propriety, and, upon 
summing up all these appropriations, you will not find so much 
as four thousand days left disposable for direct intellectual 
culture. Four thousand, or forty hundreds, will be a hundred 
forties ; that is, according to the lax Hebrew method of indi- 
cating six weeks by the phrase of " forty days," you will have a 
hundred bills or drafts on Father Time, value six weeks each, 
as the whole period available for intellectual labor. A solid 
block of about eleven and a half continuous years is all that a 
long life will furnish for the development of what is most august 
in man's nature. After that, the night comes when no man can 
work ; brain and arm will be alike unserviceable ; or, if the life 
should be unusually extended, the vital powers will be drooping 
as regards all motions in advance. 

Limited thus severely in his direct approaches to knowledge, 
and in his approaches to that which is a thousand Hmes more 
important than knowledge, namely, the conduct and discipline of 
the knowing faculty, the more clamorous is the necessity that a 



42 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

wise man should turn to account any indirect and supplemen- 
tary means toward the same ends ; and amongst these means a 
chief one by right and potentially is conversation. Even the 
primary means, books, study, and meditation, through errors 
from without and errors from within, are not that which they 
might be made. Too constantly, when reviewing his own efforts 
for improvement, a man has reason to say (indignantly, as one 
injured by others ; penitentially, as contributing to this injury 
himself) : " Much of my studies have been thrown away ; many 
books which were useless, or worse than useless, I have read ; 
many books which ought to have been read, I have left unread ; 
such is the sad necessity under the absence of all preconceived 
plan ; and the proper road is first ascertained when the journey 
is drawing to its close." In a wilderness so vast as that of 
books, to go astray often and widely is pardonable, because it is 
inevitable ; and in proportion as the errors on this primary field 
of study have been great, it is imjDortant to have reaped some 
compensatory benefits on the secondary field of conversation. 
Books teach by one machinery, conversation by another ; and, if 
these resources were trained into correspondence to their own sep- 
arate ideals, they might become reciprocally the complements of 
each other. The false selection of books, for instance, might often 
be rectified at once by the frank collation of experiences which 
takes place in miscellaneous colloquial intercourse. But other 
and greater advantages belong to conversatfon for the effectual 
promotion of intellectual culture. Social discussion supplies the 
natural integration for the deficiencies of priv^ate and seques- 
tered study. Simply to rehearse, simply to express in words 
amongst familiar friends, one's own intellectual perplexities, is 



CONVERSA TION. 43 

oftentimes to clear them up. It is well known that the best 
means of learning is by teaching ; the effort that is made for 
others is made eventually for ourselves ; and the readiest 
method of illuminating obscure conceptions, or maturing such 
as are crude, lies in an earnest effort to make them apprehensi- 
ble by others. Even this is but one among the functions filled 
by conversation. Each separate individual in a company is 
likely to see any problem or idea under some difference of 
angle. Each may have some difference of views to contribute, 
derived either from a different course of reading, or a different 
tenor of reflection, or perhaps a different train of experience. 
The advantages of colloquial discussion are not only often 
commensurate in degree to those of study, but they recommend 
themselves also as being different in kind ; they are special and 
sui generis. It must, therefore, be important that so great an 
organ of intellectual development should not be neutralized by 
mismanagement, as generally it is, or neglected through insensi- 
bility to its latent capacities. The importance of the subject 
should be measured by its relation to the interests of the intel- 
lect ; and on this principle we do not scruple to think that, in 
reviewing our own experience of the causes most commonly at 
war with the free movement of conversation as it ought to be, we 
are in effect contributing hints for a new chapter in any future 
" Essay on the Improvement of the Mind." Watts' book under 
that title is really of little practical use, nor would it ever have 
been thought so had it not been patronized, in a spirit of parti- 
sanship, by a particular section of religious dissenters. Wher- 
ever that happens the fortune of a book is made ; for the seata- 
rian impulse creates a sensible current '" favor of the book ; 



44 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

and the general or neutral reader yields passively to the motion 
of the current, without knowing or caring to know whence it is 
derived. 

Our remarks must of necessity be cursory here, so that they 
will not need or permit much preparation ; but one distinction, 
which is likely to strike on some minds, as to the two different 
purposes of conversation, ought to be noticed, since otherwise 
it will seem doubtful whether we have not confounded them ; or, 
secondly, if we have not confounded them, which of the two it 
is that our remarks contemplate. In speaking above of conver- 
sation, we have fixed our view on those uses of conversation 
which are ministerial to intellectual culture ; but, in relation to 
the majority of men, conversation is far less valuable as an 
organ of intellectual culture than of social enjoyment. For one 
man interested in conversation as a means of advancing his 
studies, there are fifty men whose interest in conversation points 
exclusively to convivial pleasure. This, as being a more exten- 
sive function of conversation, is so far the more dignified func- 
tion ; whilst, on the other hand, such a purpose as direct mental 
improvement seems by its superior gravity to challenge the 
higher rank. Yet, in fact, even here the more general purpose 
of conversation takes precedency ; for, when dedicated to the 
objects of festal delight, conversation rises by its tendency to 
the rank of a fine art. It is true that not one man in a million 
rises to any distinction in this art; nor, whatever France may 
conceit of herself, has any one nation, amongst other nations, a 
real precedency in this art. The artists are rare indeed ; but 
still the art, as distinguished from the artist, may, by its difficul- 
ties, by the quality of its graces, and by the range of its possi- 



CONVERSA TION. 45 

ble brilliances, take rank as ^ fine art; or, at all events, accord- 
ing to its powers of execution, it tends to that rank ; whereas 
the best order of conversation that is simply ministerial to a 
purpose of use, cannot pretend to a higher name than that of a 
mechanic art. But these distinctions, though they would form 
the grounds of a separate treatment in a regular treatise on 
conversation, may be practically neglected on this occasion, 
because the hints ofifered, by the generality of the terms in which 
they express themselves, may be applied indifferently to either 
class of conversation. The main diseases, indeed, which ob- 
struct the healthy movement of conversation, recur everywhere ; 
and alike, whether the object be pleasure or profit in the free 
interchange of thought, almost universally that free interchange 
is obstructed in the very same way, by the very same defect of 
any controlling principle for sustaining the general rights and 
interests of the company, and by the same vices of self-indulgent 
indolence, or of callous selfishness, or of insolent vanity, in the 
individual talkers. 

Let us fall back on the recollections of our own experience. 
In the course of our life we have heard much of what was 
reputed to be the select conversation of the day, and we have 
heard many of those who figured at the moment as effective 
talkers ; yet in mere sincerity, and without a vestige of misan- 
thropic retrospect, we must say, that never once has it happened 
to us to come away from any display of that nature without in- 
tense disappointment ; and it always appeared to us that this 
failure (which soon ceased to Jdc a disappointment) was inevitable 
by a necessity of the case. For here lay the stress of the 
difficulty : almost all depends, in most trials of skill, upon the 



46 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

parity of those who are matched against each other. An igno- 
rant person supposes that to an able disputant it must be an 
advantage to have a feeble opponent ; whereas, on the contrary, 
it is ruin to him ; for he cannot display his own powers but 
through something of a corresponding power in the resistance 
of his antagonist. A brilliant fencer is lost and confounded in 
playing with a novice ; and the same thing takes place in play- 
ing at ball, or battledore, or in dancing, where a powerless 
partner does not enable you to shine the more, but reduces you 
to mere helplessness, and takes the wind altogether out of your 
sails. Now, if by some rare good luck the great talker — the 
protagonist — of the evening has been provided with a com- 
mensurate second, it is just possible that something like a 
brilliant " passage of arms " may be the result, though much, 
even in that case, will depend on the chances of the moment 
for furnishing a fortunate theme ; and even then, amongst the 
superior part of the company, a feeling of deep vulgarity and of 
mountebank display is inseparable from such an ostentatious 
duel of wit. On the other hand, supposing your great talker to 
be received like any other visitor, and turned loose upon the 
company, then he must do one of two things : either he will 
talk upon outre subjects specially tabooed to his own private 
use, in which case the great man has the air of a quack-doctor 
addressing a mob from a street stage ; or else he will talk like 
ordinary people upon popular topics, in which case the compan}', 
out of natural politeness, that they may not seem to be staring 
at him as a lion, will hasten to meet him in the same style ; the 
conversation will become general ; the great man will seem 
reasonable and well-bred ; but, at the same time, we grieve to 



CONVERSA TION. 47 

say it, the great man will have been extinguished by being drawn 
off from his exclusive ground. The dilemma, in short, is this : 
if the great talker attempts the plan of showing off by firing 
cannon-shot when everybody else is contented with musketry, 
then undoubtedly he produces an impression, but at the expense 
of insulating himself from the sympathies of the company, and 
standing aloof as a sort of monster hired to play tricks of 
funambulism for the night. Yet again, if he contents himself 
with a musket like other people, then for us, from whom he 
modestly hides his talent under a bushel, \\\ what respect is he 
different from the man who has no such talent .'' 

" If she be not fair to me, 
What care I how fair she be?"' 

The reader, therefore, may take it upon the a priori logic of 
this dilemma, or upon the evidence of our own experience, that 
all reputation for brilliant talking is a visionary thing, and rests 
upon a sheer impossibility — namely, upon such a histrionic 
performance in a state of insulation from the rest of the com- 
pany as could not be effected, even for a single time, without a 
rare and difficult collusion, and could not even for that single 
time, be endurable to a man of delicate and honorable sensibili- 
ties. 

Yet surely Coleridge had such a reputation, and without need- 
ing any collusion at all; for Coleridge, unless he could have all 
the talk, would have none. But then this was not conversation ; 
it was not coUoquium^ or talking with the company, but a/h^qiiinm, 
or talking to the company. As Madame de Stael observed, 
Coleridge talked, and could talk, only by monologue. Such a 
mode of systematic trespass upon the conversational rights of a 



48 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

whole party, gathered together under pretence of amusement, is 
fatal to every purpose of social intercourse, whether that pur- 
pose be connected with direct use and the service of the intel- 
lect, or with the general graces and amenities of life. The 
result is the same, under whatever impulse such an outrage is 
practised ; but the impulse is not always the same ; it varies ; 
and so far the criminal intention varies. In some people this 
gross excess takes its rise in pure arrogance. They are fully 
aware of their own intrusion upon the general privileges of the 
company ; they are aware of the temper in which it is likely to 
be received ; but they persist wilfully in the wrong, as a sort of 
homage levied compulsorily upon those who may wish to resist 
it but hardly can do so without a violent interruption, wearing 
the same shape of indecorum as that which they resent. In 
most i^eople, however, it is not arrogance which prompts this 
capital offence against social rights, but a blind selfishness, 
yielding passively to its own instincts, without being distinctly 
aware of the degree in which this self-indulgence trespasses on 
the rights of others. We see the same temper illustrated at 
times in travelling ; a brutal person, as we are disposed at first 
to pronounce him, but more frequently one who yields uncon- 
sciously to a lethargy of selfishness, plants himself at the public 
fireplace, so as to exclude his fellow-travellers from all but a 
fraction gf the warmth. Yet he does not do this .in a spirit of 
wilful aggression upon others; he has but a glimmering suspi- 
cion of the odious shape which his own act assumes to others, 
for the luxurious torpor of self-indulgence has extended its mists 
to the energy and clearness of his perceptions. Meantime, 
Coleridge's habit of soliloquizing through a whole evening of 



CONVERSA TION. 49 

four or five hours had its origin neither in arrogance nor in 
absolute selfishness. The fact was that he could not talk unless 
he were uninterrupted, and unless he were able to count upon 
this concession from the company. It was a silent contract 
between him and his hearers, that nobody should speak but him- 
self. If any man objected to this arrangement, why did he 
come ? For the custom of the place, the lex loci, being notori- 
ous, by coming at all he was understood to profess his allegiance 
to the autocrat who presided. It was not, therefore, by an inso- 
lent usurpation that Coleridge persisted in monology through 
his whole life, but in virtue of a concession from the kindness 
and respect of his friends. You could not be angry with him 
for using his privilege, for it was a privilege confessed by others, 
and a privilege which he w^as ready to resign as soon as any man 
demurred to it. But though reconciled to it by these considera- 
tions, and by the ability with which he used it, you could not 
but feel that it worked ill for all parties. Himself it tempted 
oftentimes into pure garrulity of egotism, and the listeners it 
reduced to a state of debilitated sympathy or of absolute torpor. 
Prevented by the custom from putting questions, from proposing 
doubts, from asking for explanations, reacting by no mode of 
mental activity, and condemned also to the mental distress of 
hearing opinions or doctrines stream past them by flights which 
they must not arrest for a moment, so as even to take a note of 
them, and which yet they could not often understand, or, seem- 
ing to understand, could not always approve, the audience sank 
at times into a listless condition of inanimate vacuity. To be 
acted upon forever, but never to react, is fatal to the very 
powers by which sympathy must grow, or by which intelligent 



50 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

admiration can be evoked. For his own sake, it was Coleridge's 
interest to have forced his hearers into the active commerce of 
question and answer, of objection and demur. Not otherwise 
was it possible that even the attention could be kept from droop- 
ing, or the coherency and dependency of the arguments be 
forced into light. 

The French rarely make a mistake of this nature. The grace- 
ful levity of the nation could not easil}'^ err in this direction, nor 
tolerate such deliration in the greatest of men. Not the gay 
temperament only of the French people, but the particular qual- 
ities of the French language, which (however poor for the 
higher purposes of passion) is rich beyond all others for pur- 
poses of social intercourse, prompt them to rapid and vivacious 
exchange of thought. Tediousness, therefore, above all other 
vices, finds no countenance or indulgence amongst the French, 
excepting always in two memorable cases, namely : first, the 
case of tragic dialogue on the stage, which is privileged to be 
tedious by usage and tradition ;'and, secondly, the case (author- 
ized by the best usages in living society) of narrators or racon- 
teurs. This is a shocking anomaly in the code of French good 
taste as applied to conversation. Of all the bores whom man 
in his folly hesitates to hang, and heaven in its mysterious wis- 
dom suffers to propagate their species, the most insufferable is 
the teller of "good stories," — a nuisance that should be put 
down by cudgelling, by submersion in horse-ponds, or any mode 
of abatement, as summarily as men would combine to suffocate 
a vampire or a mad dog. This case excepted, however, the 
French have the keenest possible sense of all that is odious and 
all that is ludicrous in prosing, and universally have a horror of 



CONVERSA TION. 5 I 

des longucrs. It is not strange, therefore, that Madame de Stael 
noticed little as extraordinary in Coleridge beyond this one capi- 
tal monstrosity of unlimited soliloqu}^ that being a peculiarity 
which she never could have witnessed in France ; and, consider- 
ing the burnish of her French tastes in all that concerned collo- 
quial characteristics, it is creditable to her forbearance that she 
noticed even this rather as a memorable fact than as the inhu- 
man fault which it was. On the other hand, Coleridge was not 
so forbearing as regarded the brilliant French lady. He spoke 
of her to ourselves as a very frivolous person, and in short sum- 
mary terms that disdained to linger upon a subject so incon- 
siderable. It is remarkable that Goethe and Schiller both 
conversed with Madame de Stael, like Coleridge, and both spoke 
of her afterward in the same disparaging terms as Coleridge. 
But it is equally remarkable that Baron William Humboldt, who 
was personally acquainted with all the four parties, — Madame de 
Stael, Goethe, Schiller, and Coleridge, — gave it as his opinion 
(in letters subsequently published) that the lady had been calum- 
niated through a very ignoble cause — namely, mere ignorance 
of the French language, or, at: least, non-familiarity with the 
fluencies of oral French. Neither Goethe nor Schiller, though 
well acquainted with written French, had any command of it for 
purposes of rapid conversation ; and Humboldt supj^oses that 
mere spite at the trouble which they found in limping after the 
lady so as to catch one thought that she uttered, had been the 
true cause of their unfavorable sentence upon her. Not mal- 
ice aforethought, so much as vindictive fury for the sufferings 
they had endured, accounted for their severity in the opinion of 
the diplomatic baron. He did not extend the same explanation 



52 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

to Coleridge's case, because, though even then in habits of 
intercourse with Coleridge, he had not heard of his interview 
with the lady, or of the results from that interview ; else what 
was true of the two German wits was true a fortiori of Cole- 
ridge ; the Germans at least read French and talked it slowly, 
and occasionally understood it when talked by others. But 
Coleridge did none of these things. We are all of us well 
aware that Madame de Stael was 7iot a trifler ; nay, that she 
gave utterance at times to truths as worthy to be held oracular 
as any that were uttered by the three inspired wits — all philoso- 
phers, and bound to truth — but all poets, and privileged to 
be wayward. This we may collect from these anecdotes, that 
people accustomed to colloquial despotism, and who wield a 
sceptre within a circle of thei-r own, are no longer capable of 
impartial judgments, and do not accommodate themselves with 
patience, or even with justice, to the pretensions of rivals ; and 
were it only for this result of conversational tyranny, it calls 
clamorously for extinction by some combined action upon the 
part of society. 

Is such a combination on the part of society possible as a 
sustained effort ? We imagine that it is in these times, and will 
be more so in the times which are coming. Formerly, the social 
meetings of men and women, except only in capital cities, were 
few ; and even in such cities the infusion of female influence 
was not broad and powerful enough for the correction of those 
great aberrations from just ideals which disfigured social inter- 
course. But great changes are proceeding ; were it only by the 
vast revolution in our means of intercourse, laying open every 
village to the contagion of social temptation, the world of West- 



CONVERSA riON. 5 3 

ern Europe is tending more and more to a mode of living in 
public. Under such a law of life, conversation becomes a vital 
interest of every hour, that can no more suffer interruption from 
individual caprice or arrogance than the animal process of res- 
piration from transient disturbances of health. Once, when trav- 
elling was rare, there was no fixed law for the usages of public 
rooms in inns or coffee-houses ; the courtesy of individuals was 
the tenure by which men held their rights. If a morose person 
detained the newspaper for hours, there was no remedy. At 
present, according to the circumstances of the case, there are 
strict regulations, which secure to each individual his own share 
of the common rights. 

A corresponding change will gradually take place in the 
usages which regulate conversation. It will come to be consid- 
ered an infringement of the general rights for any man to detain 
the conversation, or arrest its movement, for more than a short 
space of time, which gradually will be more and more defined. 
This one curtailment of arrogant pretensions will lead to others. 
Egotism will no longer freeze the openings to intellectual 
discussions ; and conversation will then become, what it never 
has been before, a powerful ally of education and generally of 
self-culture. The main diseases that besiege conversation at 
present are — ist. The want of timing. Those who are not 
recalled, by a sense of courtesy and equity, to the continual 
remembrance that, in appropriating too large a share of the 
conversation, they are committing a fraud upon their com- 
panions, are beyond all control of monitory hints or of reproof, 
which does not take a direct and open shape of personal remon- 
strance ; but this, where the purpose of the assembly is festive 



54 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

and convivial, bears too harsh an expression for most people's 
feelings. That objection, however, would not apply to any 
mode of admonition that was universally established. A public 
memento carries with it no personality. For instance, in the 
Roman law-courts, no advocate complained of the clepsydra, or 
water time-piece, wliich regulated the duration of his pleadings. 
Now, such a contrivance would not be impracticable at an after- 
dinner talk. To invert the clepsydra when all the water had 
run out, would be an act open to any one of the guests, and 
liable to no misconstruction, when this check was generally 
applied, and understood to be a simple expression of public 
defence, not of private rudeness or personality. The clepsydra 
ought to be filled with some brilliantly colored fluid to be placed 
in the centre of the table, and with the capacity, at the very 
most, of the little minute glasses used for regulating the boiling 
of eggs. It would obviously be insupportably tedious to turn 
the glass every two or three minutes ; but to do so occasionally 
would avail as a sufficient memento to the company. 2d. Con- 
versation suffers from the want of some discretional power 
lodged in an individual for controlling its movements. Very 
often it sinks into insipidity through mere accident. Some trifle 
has turned its current upon ground where few of the company 
have anything to say — the commerce of thought languishes; 
and the consciousness that it is languishing about a narrow 
circle, " unde pedem proferre pudor vetat," operates for the 
general refrigeration of the company. Now, the ancient Greeks 
had an officer appointed over every convivial meeting, whose 
functions applied to all cases of doubt or interruption that could 
threaten the genial harmony of the company. We also have 
such officers, presidents, vice-presidents, etc. ; and we need only 



CONVERSA TIOX. 5 5 

to extend their powers, so that they may exercise over the 
movement of the conversation the beneficial influence of the 
Athenian symposicDxh. At present the evil is, that conversaiion 
has no authorized originator; it is servile to the accidents of the 
moment ; and generally these accidents are merely verbal. 
Some word or some name is dropped casually in the course of 
an illustration ; and that is allowed to suggest a topic, though 
neither interesting to the majority of the persons present, nor 
leading naturally into other collateral topics that are more so. 
Now, in such cases it will be the business of the symposiarch to 
restore the interest of the conversation, and to rekindle its 
animation, by recalling it from any tracks of dulness or sterility 
into which it may have rambled. The natural exairsivetiess of 
colloquial intercourse, its tendency to advance by subtle links of 
association, is one of its advantages ; but mere vagrancy from 
passive acquiescence in the direction given to it by chance or by 
any verbal accident, is amongst its worst diseases. The 
business of the symposiarch will be, to watch these morbid 
tendencies, which are not the deviations of graceful freedom, 
but the distortions of imbecility and collapse. His business it 
will also be to derive occasions of discussion bearing a general 
and permanent interest from the fleeting events of the casual 
disputes of the day. His business again it will be to bring back 
a subject that has been imperfectly discussed, and has yielded 
but half of the interest which it promises, under the interruption 
of any accident which may have carried the thoughts of the 
party into less attractive channels. Lastly, it should be an 
express office of education to form a particular style, cleansed 
from verbiage^ from elaborate parenthesis, and from circumlo- 
cution, as the only style fitted for a purpose which is one of pure 



56 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

enjoyment, and where every moment used by the speaker is 
deducted from a public stock. 

Many other suggestions for the improvement of conversation 
might be brought forward within ampler limits ; and especially 
for that class of conversation which moves by discussion a 
whole code of regulations might be proposed, that would equally 
promote the interests of the individual speakers and the public 
interests of the truth involved in the question discussed. Mean- 
time nobody is more aware than we are that no style of 
conversation is more essentially vulgar than that which moves 
by disputation. This is the vice of the young and the inexperi- 
enced, but especially of those amongst them who are fresh from 
academic life. But discussion is not necessarily disputation ; 
and the two orders of conversation — that, on the one hand, 
which contemplates an interest of knowledge, and of the self- 
developing intellect ; that, on the other hand, which forms one 
and the widest amongst the gay embellishments of life — will 
always advance together. Whatever there may remain of 
illiberal in the first (for, according to the remark of Burke, there 
is always something illiberal in the severer aspects of study 
until balanced by the influence of social amenities), will correct 
itself, or will tend to correct itself, by the model held up in the 
second; and thus the great organ ' of social intercourse, by 
means of speech, which hitherto has done little for man, except 
through the channel of its ministrations to the direct business 
of daily necessities, will at length rise into a rivalship with 
books, and become fixed amongst the alliances of intellectual 
progress, not less than amongst the ornamental accomplish- 
ments of convivial life. 



^^^mm. 







te 



COMPENSATION.* 



-f^ 



BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
(Born 1803, Died 1SS2.) 




VER since I was a bo)'^, I have wished to write a dis- 
course on Compensation : for it seemed to me when 
very young, that on this subject life was ahead of the- 
ology, and the people knew more than the preachers 
taught. The documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be 
drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always 
before me, even in sleep ; for they are the tools in our hands, the 
bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, and 
the dwelling-house, greetings, relations, debts, and credits, the in- 
fluence of character, the nature and endowment of all men. It 
seemed to me, also, that in it might be shown men a ray of 
divinity, the present action of the soul of this world, clean from 
all vestige of tradition, and so the heart of man might be bathed 
by an inundation of eternal love, conversing with that which he 
knows was always and always must be, because it really is now. 
It appeared, moreover, that if this doctrine could be stated in 

* From Emerson's Essays, first series, through the courtesy of Mess s. Houghton,* 
Mifflin & Co. 

57 



58 RALPH WALDO EMERSON: 

terms with any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which 
this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star in many 
dark hours and crooked passages in our journey that would not 
suffer us to lose our way. 

I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at 
church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, un- 
folded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judg- 
ment. He assumed, that judgment is not executed in this 
world ; that the wicked are successful ; that the good are miser- 
able ; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a compen- 
sation to be made to both parties in the next life. No offence 
appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. As 
far as I could observe, when the meeting broke up, they sepa- 
rated without remark on the sermon. 

Yet what was the import of this teaching ? What did the 
preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the 
present life ? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, 
dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints 
are poor and despised ; and that a compensation is to be 
made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifica- 
tions another day, — bank-stock and doubloons, venison and- 
champagne ? This must be the compensation intended ; for 
what else ? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise .'' 
to love -and serve men ? Why, tkat they can do now. The 
legitimate inference the disciple would draw was : " We are to 
have such a good time as the sinners have now ; " or, to push it 
to its extreme import: " You sin now, we shall sin by and by; 
we would sin now, if we could ; not being successful, we expect 
our revenge to-morrow." 



COM PENS A TION. 59 

The fallacy lay in the mimense concession, that the bad are 
successful ; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the 
preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the mar- 
ket of what constitutes a manly success instead of confronting 
and convicting the world from the truth ; announcing the pres- 
ence of the soul ; the omnipotence of the will : and so establish- 
ing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood. 

I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of 
the day, and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men 
when occasionally they treat the related topics. I think that 
our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in princi- 
ple, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better 
than this theology. Their daily life "gives it the lie. Every 
ingenious and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in 
his own experience ; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood 
which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than they 
know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without 
after-thought, if said in conversation, would probably be ques- 
tioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on 
Providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence 
which conveys well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of 
the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement. 

I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record 
some facts that indicate the path of the law of Compensation ; 
happy beyond my expectation, if I shall truly draw the smallest 
arc of this circle. 

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of 
nature : in darkness and light ; in heat and cold ; in the ebb and 



60 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

flow of waters ; in male and female; in the inspiration and expi- 
ration of plants and animals ; in the equation of quantity and 
quality in the fluids of the animal body ; in the systole and 
diastole of the heart ; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; 
in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, gal- 
vanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at 
one end of a needle ; the opposite magnetism takes place 
at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. 
To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dual- 
ism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests 
another thing to make it whole ; as, spirit, matter ; man, woman; 
odd, even ; subjective, objective ; in, out; upper, under ; motion, 
rest ; yea, nay. 

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. 
The entire system of things gets represented in every particle. 
There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, 
day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, 
in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. 
The reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within these 
small boundaries. For example, in the animal kingdom the 
ph3^siologist has observed that no creatures are favorites, but a 
certain compensation balances every gift and every defect. A 
surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from 
another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are 
enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. 

The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. 
What we gain in power is lost in time; and the converse. The 
periodic or compensating errors of the planets is another in- 
stance. The influences of climate and soil in political history 



COM PENS A TION. 6 1 

are another. The cold cHmate invigorates. The barren soil 
does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. 

The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. 
Every excess causes a defect ; every defect an excess. Every 
sweet has its sour ; every evil its good. Every faculty which is 
a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It 
is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of 
wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, 
you have gained something else ; and for every thing you gain, 
you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that 
use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out 
of the man what she puts into his chest, swells the estate, but 
kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The 
waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their 
loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condition tend to equalize 
themselves. There is always some levelling circumstance that 
puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, 
substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too 
strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad 
citizen, — a morose rufifian, with a clash of the pirate in him ; — 
nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are 
getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and 
love and fear for them smooth his grim scowl to courtesy. 
Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and feldspar, 
takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance 
true. 

The farmer imagines po^er and place are fine things. But 
the President has paid dear for his White House. It has com- 
monly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attri- 



62 RALPH WALDO EMERSON: 

butes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appear- 
ance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real 
masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men desire 
the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius ? 
Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of 
thought is great, and overlooks thousands, has the charges of 
that eminence. With every influx of light comes new danger. 
Has he light ? he must bear witness to the light, and always out- 
run that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by 
his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. He must 
hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the 
world loves and admires and covets ? — he must cast behind him 
their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, 
and become a byword and a hissing. 

This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain 
to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be 
mismanaged long. Res ?wlunt din male adviinistrat-i. Though 
no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist and will appear. 
If the government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If 
you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make 
the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the 
law is too mild, private vengence comes in. If the government 
is a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by an overcharge 
of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercer flame. The 
true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost 
rigors or felicities of condition, and to establish themselves with 
great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. Under 
all governments the influence of character remains the same, — 
in Turkey and in New England about alike. Under the pri- 



COMPENSA TION. 63 

nieval despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses that man must 
have been as free as culture could make him. 

These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is repre- 
sented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature 
contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one 
hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every meta- 
morphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a 
swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. 
Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, 
but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hin- 
drances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every 
occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, 
and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem 
of human life ; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its 
course, and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate 
the whole man, and recite all his destiny. 

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope 
cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. 
Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs 
of reproduction that take hold on eternity, — all find room to 
consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every 
act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears 
with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the 
universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good 
is there, so is the evil ; if the affinity, so the repulsion ; if the 
force, so the limitation. 

Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul, 
which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel 
its inspiration ; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. 



64 RALPH WALDO EMERSOiV. 

" It is in the world, and tlie world was made by it." Justice is 
not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts 
of life, 01 xv^oi Jiug uel evnimovai, — The dice of God are 
always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or 
a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances 
itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, no more nor 
less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is 
punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in 
silence and certainty. What we call retribution is the universal 
necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. 
If you see smoke there must be fire. If you see a hand or a 
limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind. 

Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, 
in a twofold manner: first, in the thing, or in real nature; and 
secondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call 
the circumstance the retribution. The causal retribution is in 
the thing, and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the cir- 
cumstance is seen by the understanding ; it is inseparable from 
the__,thing, but is often spread over a long time, and so does not 
become distinct until after many years. The specific stripes 
may follow late after the offence, but they follow because they 
accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. 
Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower 
of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means 
and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed ; for the effect al- 
ready blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the 
fruit in the seed. 

Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be dis- 
parted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate ; for 



COMPENSA TION. 65 

example, — to gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the 
senses from the needs of the character. The ingenuity of man 
has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem, — 
how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual 
bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral 
fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper sur- 
face so thin as to leave it bottomless ; to get a one c/id, without 
an ot/icr end. The soul says. Eat ; the body would feast. The 
soul says. The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul ; 
the body would join the flesh only. The soul says. Have 
dominion over all things to the ends of virtue ; the body would 
have the power over things to its own ends. 

The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. 
It would be the only fact. All things shall be added unto it, — 
power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The particular man aims 
to be somebody; to set up for himself; to truck and higgle for 
a private good ; and, in particulars, to ride, that he may ride ; to 
dress, that he may be dressed ; to eat, that he may eat; and to 
govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to be great ; they 
would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to 
be great is to possess one side of nature, — the sweet, — with- 
out the other side, — the bitter. 

This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to 
this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the smallest 
success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure 
is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, 
power out of strong things, as soon as we seek to separate them 
from the whole. We can no more halve things and get the 
sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have 



66 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

no outside, or a light without a shadow. " Drive out nature 
with a fork, slie comes running back." 

Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise 
seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not 
know; that they do not touch him; — but the brag is on his 
lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in 
one part, they attack him in another more vital part. If he has 
escaped them in form and in the appearance, it is because he 
has resisted his life, and fled from himself, and the retribution 
is so much death. So signal is the failure of all attempts to 
make this separation of the good from the tax, that the experi- 
ment would not be tried, — since to try it is to be mad, — but 
for the circumstance, that when the disease began in the will, of 
rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that 
the man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to 
see the sensual allurement of an object, and not see the sensual 
hurt ; he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's tail ; 
and thinks he can cut off that which he would have, from that 
which he would not have. " How secret art thou who dwellest 
in the highest heavens in silence, O thou only great God, sprink- 
ling with an unwearied Providence certain penal blindnesses 
upon such as have unbridled desires ! " ^ 

The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, 
of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It finds a 
tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, 
Supreme Mind; but having traditionally ascribed to him many 
base actions, they involuntarily made amends to reason, by tying 



1 St. Augustine, " Confessions," B. I. 



COMPENSA TION. 6j 

up the hands of so bad a god. He-is made as helpless as a king 
of England. Prometheus knows one secret which Jove must 
bargain for ; Minerva, another. He cannot get his own thun- 
ders ; Minerva keeps the key of them. 

" Of all the gods, I only know the keys 
That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
His thunders sleep." 

A plain confession of the in-working of the All, and of its moral 
aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics ; and it 
would seem impossible for any fable to be invented and get any 
currency which was not moral. Aurora forgot to ask youth for 
her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles 
is not quite invulnerable ; the sacred waters did not wash the 
heel by which Thetis held him. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, 
is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was 
bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which it covered is 
mortal. And so it must be. There is a crack in everything God 
has made. It would seem, there is always this vindictive circum- 
stance stealing in at unawares, even into the wild poesy in which 
the human fancy attempted to make bold holiday, and to shake 
itself free of the old laws, — this back-stroke, this kick of the 
gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; that in nature nothing can 
be given, all things are sold. 

This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch in 
the universe, and lets no offence go unchastised. The Furies, 
they said, are attendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven 
should transgress his path, they would punish him. The poets 
related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs 
had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners ; 



68 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

that the belt which Ajax gave Hector, dragged the Trojan 
hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and 
the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point 
Ajax fell. They recorded, that when the Thasians erected a 
statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one of his rivals 
went to it by night, and endeavored to throw it down by 
repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its pedestal, 
and was crushed to death beneath its fall. 

This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came from 
thought above the will of the writer. That is the best part of 
each writer, which has nothing private in it ; that which he does 
not know ; that which flowed out of his constitution, and not 
from his too active invention ; that which in the study of a single 
artist you might not easily find, but in the study of many, you 
would abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, but 
the work of man in that early Hellenic world, that I would 
know. The name and circumstance of Phidias, however con- 
venient for history, embarrass when we come to the highest 
criticism. We are to see that which man was tending to do in a 
given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified 
in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of 
Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at the moment wrought. 

Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the prov- 
erbs of "all nations, which are always the literature of reason, or 
the statements of an absolute truth, without qualification. 
Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary 
of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to 
appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it 
will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction. And 



CO Mr ENS A TION. 69 

this law of laws which the pulpit, the senate, and the college 
deny, is hourly preached in all markets and workshops by flights 
of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as 
that of birds and flies. 

All things are double, one against another. — Tit for tat ; an 
eye for an eye ; a tootii for a tooth ; blood for blood ; measure 
for measure; love for love. — Give and it shall be given you. 
— He that watereth shall be watered himself. — What will you 
have? quoth God; pay for it and take it. — Nothing venture, 
nothing have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast 
done, no more, no less. — Who doth not work shall not eat.. — 
Harm watch, harm catch. — Curses always recoil on the head of 
him who imprecates them. — If you put a chain around the neck 
of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. — Bad 
counsel confounds the adviser. — The Devil is an ass. 

It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action is 
.overmastered and characterized above our will by the law cf 
nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside .from the public 
good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a 
line with the poles of the world. 

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will, 
or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his com- 
panions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters 
it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but the other end re- 
mains in the thrower's bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon hurled 
at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, 
and if the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, it will go 
nigh to cut the steersman in twain, or to sink the boat. 

You cannot do wrong without suffering wronsc. " No man 



70 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said 
Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he 
excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate 
it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the 
door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat 
men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. 
If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. The 
senses would make things of all persons ; of women, of chil- 
dren, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, " I will get it from his 
purse or get it from his skin," is sound philosophy. 

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are 
speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand 
in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in 
meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents 
of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. 
But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and 
attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my 
neighbor feels the wrong ; he shrinks from me as far as I have 
shrunk from him ; his eyes no longer seek mine ; there is war 
between us ; there is hate in him and fear in me. 

All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all 
unjust accumulations of property and power, are avenged in 
the same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and 
the herafd of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there 
is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and 
though you see not well what he hovers for, there is death some- 
where. Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated 
classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded aiid mowed and 
gibbered over government and property. That obscene bird is 



COMPENSATION. 7 1 

not there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must 
be revised. 

Of the Uke nature is that expectation of change which in- 
stantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. The 
terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates, the awe of 
prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous soul to 
impose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, 
are the tremblings of the balance of justice through the heart 
and mind of man. 

Experienced men of the world know very well that it is best 
to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a man often pays 
dear for a small frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt. 
Has a man gained any thing who has received a hundred favors 
and rendered none? Has he gained by borrowing, through 
indolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses or money ? 
There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgement of ben- 
efit on the one part, and of debt on the other ; that is, of supe- 
riority and inferiority. The transaction remains in the memory 
of himself and his neighbor ; and every new transaction alters, 
according to its nature, their relation to each other. He may 
soon come to see that he had better have broken his own bones 
than to have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that " the high- 
est price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it." 

A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and 
know that it is the part of prudence to face every claimant, and 
pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. 
Always pay; for, first or last, you must pay your entire debt. 
Persons and events may stand for a time between you and 
justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last 



^2 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

your own debt. If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity 
which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. 
But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is 
great who confers -the most benefits. He is base — and that is 
the one base thing in the universe — to receive favors and 
render none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits 
to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the 
benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed 
for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much 
good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm 
worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. 

Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, 
say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, 
a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application of good-sense to a 
common want. It is best to pay in your land a skilful gardener, 
or to buy good-sense applied to gardening ; in your sailor, good- 
sense applied to navigation ; in the house, good-sense applied to 
cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, good-sense applied 
to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your presence, or 
spread yourself throughout your estate. But because of the 
dual constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be no 
cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swin- 
dles himself. For the real price of labor is knowledge and 
virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like 
paper-money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which 
they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be coun- 
terfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered 
but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure 
motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort 



COM TENS A TION. Jl 

the knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest 
care and pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do 
the thing, and you shall have the power : but they who do not 
the thing have not the power. 

Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a 
stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense 
illustration of the perfect compensation of the universe. The 
absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every 
thing has its price, — and if that price is not paid, not that 
thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to 
get any thing without its price, — is not less sublime in the 
columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of 
light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. I 
cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated 
in those processes with which he is conversant, — the stern 
ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out 
by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the 
footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a state, — do recom- 
mend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his 
business to his imagination. 

The lea'gue between virtue and nature engages all things 
to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and 
substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. Pie 
finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is 
no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, 
and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems 
as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the 
woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and 
mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out 



74 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no 
inlet or clue. Some damning circumstance always transpires. 
The laws and substances of nature — water, snow, wind, gravita- 
tion — become penalties to the thief. 

On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all 
right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathe- 
matically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic 
equation. The good man has absolute good, which like fire 
turns every thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him 
any harm ; but as the royal armies sent against Napoleon, when 
he approached, cast down their colors and from enemies became 
friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offence, poverty, 
prove benefactors : — 

" Winds blow and waters roll > 

Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 
Yet in themselves are nothing." 

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As 
no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, 
so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made 
useful to him. The stag in the fable admired his horns and 
blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, 
and afterward, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him. 
Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. As no man 
thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against 
it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances 
or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and seen 
the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. Has 
he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society ? 
Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone, and acquire 



COMPENSATION. 75 

habits of self-help; and thus, Uke the wounded oyster, he mends 
his shell with pearl. 

Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation 
which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we 
are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. A great nian is 
always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of 
advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, 
defeated, he has a chance to learn something ; he has been put 
on his wits, on his manhood ; he has gained facts ; learns his 
ignorance ; is cured of the insanity of conceit ; has got modera- 
tion and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of 
his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his 
weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a 
dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo ! he has passed on 
invulnerable. Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be de- 
fended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said 
against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon 
as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one 
that lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil 
to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich 
Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he 
kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the tempta- 
tion we resist. 

The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and 
enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts 
and bars are not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness 
in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long, 
under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it 
is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, 



'j6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. There is 
a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of 
things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every 
contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you 
serve, an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in 
your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the pay- 
ment is withholden, the better for you ; for compound interest 
on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer. 

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat 
nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It 
makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a 
tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily 
bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The 
mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. 
Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its 
whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a 
right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and 
outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. 
It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put 
out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate 
spirit turns their spite against the wrong-doers. The martyr 
cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of 
fame; every prison, a more illustrious abode; every burned 
book or house enlightens the world ; every suppressed or 
expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. 
Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to com- 
munities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the 
martyrs are justified. 



COMPENSA TION. 77 

Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. 
The man is all. Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. 
Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content. But the 
doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. 
The thoughtless say on hearing these representations : " What 
boots it to do well ? there is one event to good and evil ; if I 
gain any good I must pay for it; if I lose any good, I gain some 
other ; all actions are indifferent." 

There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation — to 
wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. 
The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose 
waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal 
abyss of real Being. Essence, or God, is not a relation, or a 
part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding 
negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, 
and times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx 
from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the same. 
Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night or 
shade, on which, as a background, the living universe paints 
itself forth ; but no fact is begotten by it ; it cannot work, for it 
is not. It cannot work any good ; it cannot work any harm. 
It is harm, inasmuch as it is worse not to be than to be. 

We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because 
the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy, and does not 
come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. 
There is no stunning confutation of his nonsense before men 
and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law? Inasmuch 
as he carries the malignity and the lie with him, he so far 
deceases from nature. In some manner there will be a demon- 



y8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

stration of the wrong to the understanding also ; but should we 
not see it, this deadly deduction makes square the eternal 
account. 

Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of 
rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to 
virtue ; no penalty to wisdom : they are proper additions of 
being. In a virtuous action, I properly am ; in a virtuous act, 
I add to the world ; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos 
and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of 
the horizon. There can be no excess to love ; none to knowl- 
edge ; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in 
the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms 
an Optimism, never a Pessimism. 

Man's life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is 
trust. Our instinct uses " more " and " less " in application to 
man, of the presence of the soul, and not of its absence ; the 
brave man is greater than the coward ; the true, the benevolent, 
the wise, is more a man, and not less, than the fool and knave. 
There is no tax on the good of virtue ; for that is the incoming 
of God himself, or absolute existence, without any comparative. 
Material good has its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, 
has no root in me, and the next wind will blow it away. But all 
the good of nature is the soul's, and may be had, if paid for in 
nature's lawful coin — that is, by labor which the heart and the 
head allow, I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for 
example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings 
with it new burdens. I do not wish more external goods, — 
neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The 
gain is apparent ; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the 



COMPENSA TION. 79 

knowledge that the compensation exists, and that it is not 
desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene, 
eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. 
I learn the wisdom of St. Bernard : " Nothing can work me 
damage except myself ; the harm that I sustain I carry about 
with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault." 

In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequali- 
ties of condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be 
the distinction of More and Less. How can Less not feel the 
pain ; how not feel indignation or malevolence toward More ? 
Look at those who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and 
knows not well what to make of it. He almost shuns their eye ; 
he fears they will upbraid God. What should they do ? It seems 
a great injustice. But see the facts nearly, and these moun- 
tainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them, as the sun 
melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all men 
being one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. 
I am my brother, and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed 
and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love ; I can still 
receive ; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he 
loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my 
guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the 
estate I so admired and envied is my own. It is the nature of 
the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus and Shakespeare are 
fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate 
them in my own conscious domain. His virtue, — is not that 
mine? His wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. 

Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The changes 
which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are 



8o RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

advertisements of a nature whose law is growtli. Every soul is 
by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its 
friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls 
out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits 
of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In proportion to 
the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are frequent, until 
in some happier mind they are incessant, and all worldly rela- 
tions hang very loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a trans- 
parent fluid membrane through which the living form is seen, 
and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of 
many dates, and of no settled character, in which the man is 
imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and the man of 
to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And such 
should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off 
of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment 
day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not ad- 
vancing, resisting, not co-operating with the divine expansion, 
this growth comes by shocks. 

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels 
go. We do not see that they only go out, that archangels may 
come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the 
riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do 
not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re-create that 
beautifOl yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where 
once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe that the 
spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot again 
find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep 
in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith : " Up and onward 
for evermore ! " We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will 



COMPENSATIOX. 8 1 

we rel}^ on the new ; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, 
like those monsters who look backward. 

And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to 
the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a 
mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of 
friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But 
the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all 
facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which 
seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the 
aspect of a guide or genius ; for it commonly operates revolu- 
tions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of 
youth whicli was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occu- 
pation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation 
of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It per- 
mits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the 
reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to 
the next }-ears ; and the man or woman who would have 
remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and 
too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and 
the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, 
yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 



BY MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
(Born 1822.) 




HE disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; 
sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclu- 
siveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed 
to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is 
a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity ; 
it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as 
an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, 
like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. No 
serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, as 
culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very differing 
estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must 
find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real 
ambiguity ; and such a motive the word curiosity gives us. 

I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like 
the foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad 
sense. With us the word is always used in a somewhat disap- 
proving sense. A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the 
82 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 83 

things of the mind maybe meant by a foreigner when he speaks 
of curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a certain 
notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly 
Review, some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated 
French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate 
it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in 
this : that in our English way it left out of sight the double 
sense really involved in the word curiosity, thinking enough 
was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said 
that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by curi- 
osity, and omitting either to perceive that M, Sainte-Beuve 
himself, and many other people with him, would consider that 
this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out why 
it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame and not of 
praise. For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters 
which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curi- 
osity — a desire after the things of the mind simply for their 
own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are — 
which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, 
and the very desire to see things^as they are, implies a balance 
and regulation of mind which is not often attained without 
fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and 
diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame 
when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : " The first mo- 
tive_ which o ught to compel us to study is the desire to augment 
the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelligent being 
)^et more intelligent." This is the true ground to assign for the 
genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture, 
viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and it is a worthy 



84 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

ground, even though we let the term curiosity stand to de- 
scribe it. 

But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the 
scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, 
natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground 
of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, 
the impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the desire for 
removing human error, clearing human confusion, and dimin- 
ishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world 
better and happier than we found it, — motives eminently such 
as are called social, — come in as part of the grounds of culture, 
and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly 
described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its 
origin in the love of perfection ; it is a study of perfection. It 
moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific pas- 
sion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion 
for doing good. As, in the first view of it, we took for its wor- 
thy motto Montesquieu's words : " To render an intelligent 
being yet more intelligent," so, in the second view of it, there 
is no better motto which it cajn have than these words of Bishop 
Wilson : " To make reason and the will of God prevail." 

Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be over- 
hasty in determining what reason and the will of God say, 
because -its turn is for acting rather than thinking and it wants 
to be beginning to act ; and whereas it is apt to take its own 
conceptions, which proceed from its own state of development 
and share in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for 
a basis of action ; what distinguishes culture is, that i t is pos - 
sessed by the scientific passion, as well as by the passion of 



SIVEETNESS AND LIGHT. 85 

doing good ; that it d emands wo rthy notjpns of reason and the 
will of God, and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions 
to substitute themselves for them. And knowing that no action 
or institution can be salutary and stable which 'are n ot based on 
reason and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and insti- 
tuting, even with the great aim of diminishing human error and 
misery ever before its thoughts, but that it can remember that 
acting and instituting are of little use, unless we know how and 
what we ought to act and to institute. 

This culture is more interesting and more far-reaching than 
that other, which is founded solely on the scientific passion for 
knowing. But it needs times of faith and ardor, times when 
the intellectual horizon is opening and widening all round us, to 
flourish in. And is not the close and bounded intellectual 
horizon within which we have long lived and moved now lifting 
up, and are not new lights finding free passage to shine in upon 
JUS-? For a long time there was no passage for them to make 
their way in upon us, and then it was of no use to think of 
adapting the world's action to them. Where was the hope of 
making reason and the will of God prevail among people who 
had a routine which they had christened reason and the will of 
God, in which they were inextricably bound, and beyond which 
they had no power of looking.? But now the iron force of 
adhesion to the old routine — social, political, religious — has 
wonderfully yielded ; the iron force of exclusion of all which is 
new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, not that 
people should obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old 
routine to pass for reason and the will of God, but either that 
they should allow some novelty or other to pass for these too 



86 MATTHEW ARNOLD. - ■ 

easily, or else that they should underrate the importance of 
them altogether, and think it enough to follow action for its own 
sake, without troubling themselves to make reason and the will 
of God prevail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture 
to Idc of service, culture which believes in making reason and 
the will of God prevail, believes in perfection, is the study and 
pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid 
invincible exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance 
for its ideas, simply because they are new. 
/~ The moment this vievv of culture is seized, the moment it is 
regarded not solely as the endeavor to see things as they are, to 
draw toward a knowledge of the universal order which seems to 
be intended and aimed at in the world, and which it is a man's 
happiness to go along with or his misery to go counter to, — to 
learn, in short, the will of God, — the moment, I say, culture is 

^ , considered not merely as the endeavor to see and learn this, but 
as the endeavor, also, to make it prevail, the moral, social, and 

^^ beneficent character of culture becomes manifest. The mere 
endeavor to see and learn the truth for our own personal satis- 
faction is indeed a commencement for making it prevail, a 
preparing the way for tlois, which always serves tliis, and is 
wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame absolutely in itself and 
not only in its caricature and degeneration. But perhaps it has 
got stamped with blame, and disparaged with the dubious title 
of curiosity, because in comparison with this wider endeavor of 
such great and plain utility it looks selfish, petty, and unprof- 
itable. 
<, And religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts 

/ by which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect 



^ SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 8/ 

itself, — religion, that voice of the deepest human experience, — 
does not only enjoin and sanction the aim which is the great 
aim of culture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what 
perfection is and to make it prevail ; but also, in determining 
generally in what human perfection consists, religion comes to a 
conclusion identical with that which culture — seeking the deter- 
mination of this question through all the voices of human 
experience which have been heard upon it, of art, science, 
poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order to 
give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution — likewise 
reaches. Religion says: The kingdom of God is witJiin you; 
and culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an 
internal condition, in the growth and predominance of our 
humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality. It 
places it in the ever-increasing efficacy and in the general har- 
monious expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling, which 
make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human 
nature. As I have said on a former occasion : " It is in making 
endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its 
powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit 
of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture 
is an indispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture." 
Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is 
the character of perfection as culture conceives it ; and here, 
too, it coincides with religion. 

And because men are all members of one great whole, and 
the sympathy which is in human nature will not allow one mem- 
ber to be indifferent to the rest, or to have a perfect welfare 
independent of the rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit 



88 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

the idea of perfection which culture forms, must be a general 
expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible 
while the individual remains isolated. The individual is 
required, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his own 
development if he disobeys, to carry others along with him in 
his march toward perfection, to be continually doing all he can 
to enlarge and increase the volume of the human stream sweep- 
ing thitherward. And here, once more, culture lays on us the 
same obligation as religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson has 
admirably put it, that " to promote the kingdom of God is to 
increase and hasten one's own happiness." 

But, finally, perfection — as culture from a thorough disinter- 
ested study of human nature and human experience learns to 
conceive it — is an harmonious expansion of all the powers 
which make the beauty and worth of human nature, and is not 
consistent with the over-development of any one power at the 
expense of the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion, as 
religion is generally conceived by us. 

Xy ) If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious 

^ li-^^ perfection, general perfection, and perfection which consists in 
becoming something rather than in having something, in an 

, inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set 

^ of circumstances, — it is clear that culture, instead of being the 

K frivolous and useless thihg-wiiich Mr^ Bright, and Mr. Frederic 

Harrison and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very 
important function to fulfil for mankind. And this function is 
particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole ., 
civilization is, to a much greater degree than the civilization of 
Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends con- 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 89 

stantly to become more so. But above all in our own country 
has culture a weighty part to perform, because here that mechan- 
ical character, which civilization tends to take everywhere, is 
shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed, nearly all the char- 
acters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in 
this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts them 
and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an inward 
condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechan- 
ical and material civilization in esteem with us, and nowhere, as 
I have said, so much in esteem as with us. The idea of perfec- 
tion as a general expansion of the human family is at variance 
with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the 
unrestrained swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of 
" every man for himself." Above all, the idea of perfection as 
an harmonious expansion of human nature is at variance with 
our want of flexibility, in our inaptitude for seeing more than 
one side of a thing, with our intense energetic absorption in the 
particular pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a 
rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers have, and 
are likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they will much 
oftener be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant or 
spurious Jeremiahs, than as friends and benefactors. That, 
however, will not prevent their doing in the end good service if 
they persevere. And meanwhile, the mode of action they have 
to pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight against, ought 
to be made quite clear for every one to see, who may be will- 
ing to look at the matter attentively and dispassionately. 

Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger ; often in 
machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this 



go MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve ; but always 
in machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. What is 
freedom but machinery ? what is population but machinery ? 
what is coal but machinery ? what are railroads but machinery ? 
what is wealth but machinery? what are, even, religious organi- 
zations but machinery ? Now almost every voice in England is 
accustomed to speak of these things as if they were precious 
ends in themselves, and therefore had some of the characters 
of perfection indisputably joined to them. I have before now 
noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for jDroving tlie greatness 
and happiness of England as she is, and for quite stopping the 
mouths of all gainsayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of 
reiterating this argument of his, so I do not know why I should 
be weary of noticing it. *' May not every man in England say 
what he likes?" — Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks; and that, he 
thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every man may say what he 
likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations 
of culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, 
unless what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth 
saying, — has good in it, and more good than bad. In the same 
way the Times, replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, 
looks, and behavior of the English abroad, urges that the Eng- 
lish ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just 
as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what 
each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself ; 
but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, 
graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that. 

And in the same way with respect to railroads and coal. 
Every one must have observed the strange language current 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 9I 

during the late discussions as to the possible failure of our 
supplies of coal. Our coal, thousands of people were saying, is 
the real basis of our national greatness ; if our coal runs short, 
there is an end of the greatness of England. But what is 
greatness? — culture makes us ask. Greatness is a spiritual 
condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration ; and 
the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite 
love, interest, and admiration. If England were swallowed up 
by the sea to-morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, 
would most excite the love, interest, and admiration of man- 
kind, — would most, therefore, show the evidences of having 
possessed greatness, — the England of the last twenty years, or 
the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spiritual effort, 
but when our coal, and our industrial operations depending on 
coal, were very little developed ? Well, then, what an unsound 
habit of mind it must be which makes us talk of things like coal 
or iron as constituting the greatness of England, and how salu- 
tary a friend is culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and 
thus dissipating delusions of this kind and fixing standards of 
perfection that are real ! 

Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious works for 
material advantage are directed, — the commonest of common- 
places tells us how men are always apt to regard wealth as a 
precious end in itself ; and certainly they have never been so 
apt thus to regard it as they are in England at the present time. 
Never did people believe anything more firmly, than nine Eng- 
lishmen out of ten at the present day believe that our greatness 
and welfare are proved by our being so very rich. Now, the use 
of culture is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual standard 



92 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and not only 
to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but 
machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it 
were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by 
culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would 
inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe 
most that our greatness and welfare are jDroved by our being 
very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becom- 
ing rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines. 
Culture says : " Consider these people, then, their way of life, 
their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice ; 
look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the 
things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth 
out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of 
their minds : would any amount of wealth be worth having with 
the condition that one was to become just like these people by 
having it ? " And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which is 
of the highest possible value in stemming the common tide of 
men's thoughts in a v/ealthy and industrial community, and 
which saves the future, as one may hope, from being vulgarizecJj^ 
even if it cannot save the present. 

Population, again, and bodily health and vigor, are things 
which are nowhere treated in such an unintelligent, misleading, 
exaggerated way as in England. Both are really machinery ; 
yet how many people all around us do we see rest in them and 
fail to look beyond them ! Why, one has heard people, fresh 
from reading certain articles of the Times on the Registrar- 
General's returns of marriages and births in this countr_v, who 
would talk of our large English families in quite a solemn strain, 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 



93 



as if they had something in itself beautiful, elevating, anc^ meri- 
torious in them ; as if the British Philistine would have only to 
present himself before the Great Judge with his twelve children, 
in order to be received among the sheep as a matter of right ! 
But bodily health and vigor, it may be said, are not to be 
J classed with wealth and population as mere machinery; they 
^have a more real and essential value. True ; but only as they 
>! are more intimately, connected with a perfect spiritual condition 
V than wealth or population are. The moment we disjoin them 
/V from the idea of a perfect spiritual condition, and pursue them, 
' Is we do pursue them, for their own sake, and as ends in 
themselves, our worship of them becomes as mere worship of 
''machinery, as our worship of wealth or population, and as 
^ ^ unintelligent and vulgarizing a worship as that is. Every one 
, ^ with any thing like an adequate idea of human perfection has 
X distinctly jiiarked^is subordination to higherju id. spirituaU nds 



ofthTraith^ion of bodlly'^^ig^'^d activltyT'' Bodily exercise 
profiteth little ; but godliness is profitable unto^all things/^s^ 
the author of the Epistle to_Timothy:^r And the utilitarian 



tuiraTexplTcitly : /' Eat and drink sucn an exact 
"^^^ImitTas suits the constiultlon of thy body, in refereJice^JoJh^ 
^sen'ices of the m/ml" J But the point of view of culture, keeping 
the nTark of human perfection simply and broadly in view, and 
not assigning to this perfection, as religion or utilitarianism 
assign to it, a special and limited character, — this point of vievy, 
I say, of culture is best given by these words of Epictetus : ; "Jt_ 
is a sign ^fl^i^,\' says he, — that is, of a nature not fmelyjem- 
^^dZI^to gl\^yourselt_iiplo;tIiings which relate, to ihej)£§y; 
to make, lor insTance, a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss 



K 



dWr^ 



94 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

I 

-about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great fuss about 

walking, a great fuss about riding. All these things ought to be 

[ done merely by the way : the formation of th e spirit and charac-j 

I ter must be our real concern. "FThis is admirable ; and, indeed, 

the Gree^ word'ti^cp^ctorj-s-fifiely-tempered nature, gives exactly 

the notion of perfection as culture brings us to perceive it:,.au 

harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of 

beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites " the two 

"^ noblest of things," — as Smft, who of one of the two, at any 

rate, had himself all too little, most hai^pily calls them in his 

" Battle of the Books," " the two noblest of things, stveetness and 

light." The Exxfm'ii is the man who tends toward sweetness and 

light ; the ucpvi];^ on the other hand, is our Philistine. The 

/immense spiritual significance of the Greeks is due to their 

y having been inspired with this central and happy idea of the 

y essential character of human perfection ; and I VIr. Brig ht's mis- 

P conception of culture, as a smattering of Greek and Latin, 

^ comes itself, after all, from this wonderful significance of the 

Greeks having affected the very machinery of our education, 

and is in itself a kind of homage to it. 

In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of 
perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetrj^, follows one law 
with poetry. Far more than on our freedom, our population, 
and our industrialism, many amongst us rely upon our religious 
organizations to save us. I have called religion a yet more 
important manifestation of human nature than poetry, because it 
has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and M'ith greater 
masses of men. But the idea of beauty and of a human nature 
perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, 



1 




SWEETA^ESS AND LIGHT. 95 

is a true and invaluable idea, though it has not yet had the 
success that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our 
animality, and of a human nature perfect on the moral side, — 
which is the dominant idea of religion, — has been enabled to 
have ; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a 
devout energy, to transform and govern the other. 

The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which religion and 
poetry are one, in which the idea of beauty and of a human 
nature perfect on all sides adds to itself a religious and devout 
energy, and works in the strength of that, is on this account of 
such surpassing interest and instructiveness for us, though it 
was — as, having regard to the human race in .general, and, 
indeed, having regard to the Greeks themselves, we must own 
— a premature attempt, an attempt which for success needed 
the moral and religious fibre in humanity to be more braced and 
developed than it had yet been. But Greece did not err in 
having the idea of beauty, harmonj^, and complete human 
perfection so present and paramount. It is impossible to have 
this idea too present and paramount ; only, the moral fibre must 
be braced too. And we, because we have braced the moral 
fibre, are not on that account in the right way, if at the same 
time the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfec- 
tion is wanting or misapprehended amongst us ; and evidently it 
is wanting or misapprehended at present. And when we rely as 
we do on our religious organizations, which in themselves do 
not and cannot give us this idea, and think we have done 
enough if we make them spread and prevail, then, I say, we fall 
into our common fault of overvaluing machinery. 

Nothing is more common than for people to confound the 



96 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

inward peace and satisfaction which follow the subduing of the 
obvious faults of our animality with what I may call absolute 
inward peace and satisfaction, — the peace and satisfaction 
which are reached as we draw near to c^oixipleteu^sjDiritual perfec- 
tion, and not merely to moral perfection, or rather to relative 
moral_j3gifection. No people in the world have done more and 
struggled more to attain this relative moral perfection than our 
English race has. For no people in the world has the command 
to resist the devil, to overcome the wicked one, in the nearest and 
most obvious sense of those words, had such a pressing force 
and reality. And we have had our reward, not only in the great 
worldly prosperity which our obedience to this command has 
brought us, but also, and far more, in great inward peace and 
satisfaction. But to me few things are more pathetic than to 
see people, on the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction 
which their rudimentary efforts toward perfection have brought 
them, employ, concerning their incomplete perfection and the 
religious organizations within which they have found it, language 
which properly applies only to complete perfection, and is a far- 
off echo of the human soul's prophecy of it. Religion itself, I 
need hardly say, supplies them in abundance with this grand 
language. And very freely do they use it ; yet it is really the 
severest possible criticism of such an incomplete perfection as 
alone we have yet reached through our religious organizations. 

The impulse of the English race toward moral development 
and self-conquest has nowhere so powerfully manifested itself as 
in Puritanism. Nowhere has Puritanism found so adequate an 
expression as in the religious organization of the Independents. 
The modern Independents have a newspaper, the No7ico]ifonnist, 



SWEETiXESS AND LIGHT. 97 

written with great sincerity and ability. The motto, the stand- 
ard, the profession of faith which this organ of theirs carries 
aloft, is: "The Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of 
the Protestant Rehgion." There are sweetness and Hght, and 
an ideal of complete harmonious human perfection ! One need 
not go to culture and poetry to find language to judge it. Re- 
ligion, with its instinct for perfection, supplies language to judge 
it, language, too, which is in our mouths every day. " Finally, 
be of one mind, united in feeling," says St. Peter. There is an 
ideal which judges the Puritan ideal : " The Dissidence of 
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant Religion ! " 
And religious organizations like this are what people believe in, 
rest in, would give their lives for ! Such, I say, is the wonderful 
virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of having conquered 
even the plain faults of our animality, that the religious organi- 
zation which has helped us to do it can seem to us something 
precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when it wears 
such a brand of imperfection on its forehead as this. And men 
have got such a habit of giving to the language of religion a 
special application, of making it a mere jargon, that for the 
condemnation which religion itself passes on the shortcomings 
of their religious organizations they have no ear; they are sure 
to cheat themselves and to explain this condemnation away. 
They can only be reached by the criticism which culture, like 
poetry, speaking a language not to be sophisticated, and reso- 
lutely testing these organizations by the ideal of a human per- 
fection complete on all sides, applies to them. 

But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and 
again failing, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary first 



98 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

stage to an harmonious perfection, in tlie subduing of the great 
obvious faults of our animality, which it is the glory of these 
religious organizations to have helped us to subdue. True, they 
do often so fail. They have often been without the virtues as 
well as the faults of the Puritan ; it has been one of their dan- 
gers that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they too much 
neglected the practice of his virtues. I will not, however, excul- 
pate them at the Puritan's expense. They have often failed in 
morality, and morality is indispensible. And they have been 
punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for 
his performance. They have been punished wherein they erred ; 
but their ideal of beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human 
nature complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of perfec- 
tion still ; just as the Puritan's ideal of perfection remains 
narrow and inadequate, although for what he did well he has 
been richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of 
the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfec- 
tion are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakespeare 
or Virgil, — souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that in 
human nature is most humane, were eminent, accompanying 
them on their voyage, and think what intolerable company 
Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them ! In the same 
way let us judge the religious organizations which we see all 
around' us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness 
which they have accomj^lished ; but do not let us fail to see 
clearly that their idea of human perfection is narrow and inade- 
quate, and that the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism 
of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its true 
goal. As I said with regard to wealth : Let us look at the 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 99 

life of those who live in and for it, — so I say with regard to the 
religious organizations. Look at the life imaged in such a news- 
paper as the N'o/icoiiformist, — a life of jealousy of the Establish- 
ment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and 
then think of it as an ideal of a human life completing itself on 
all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, 
and perfection ! 

Another newspaper, representing, like the Nonconformist, one 
of the religious organizations of this country, was a short time 
ao-o o-iving an account of the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, 
and of all the vice and hideousness which were to be seen in 
that crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly round upon 
Professor JHuxley, and asked him how he proposed to cure all 
this vice and hideousness without religion. I confess I felt 
disposed to ask the asker this question : And how do you pro- 
pose to cure it with such a religion as yours ? How is the ideal 
of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so narrow, 
so far removed from a true and satisfying ideal of human 
perfection, as is the life of your religious organization as you 
yourself image it, to conquer and transform all this vice and 
hideousne*ss ? Indeed, the strongest plea for the study of per- 
fection as pursued by culture, the clearest proof of the actual 
inadequacy of the idea of perfection held by the religious organi- 
zations, — expressing, as I have said, the most wide-spread effort 
which the human race has yet made after perfection, — is to be 
found in the state of our life and society with these in possession 
of it, and having been in possession of it I know not how many 
hundred years. We are all of us included in some religious 
organization or other ; we all call ourselves, in the sublime and 



lOO, MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

aspiring language of religion which I have before noticed, 
children of God. Children of God; — it is an immense pre- 
tension ! — and how are we to justify it ? By the works which 
we do, and the words which we speak. And the work which we 
collective children of God do, our grand centre of life, our city 
which we have builded for us to dwell in, is London ! London, 
with its unutterable external hideousness, and with its internal 
canker of publice egestas, privatiju opulentia, — to use the words 
which Sallust puts into Cato's mouth about Rome, — unequalled 
in the world ! The word, again, which we children of God 
speak, the voice which most hits our collective thought, the 
newspaper with the largest circulation in England, nay, with the 
largest circulation in the whole world, is the Daily Telegraph ! 
I say that when our religious organizations, — which I admit to 
express the most considerable effort after perfection that our 
race has yet made, — land us in no better result than this, it is 
high time to examine carefully their idea of perfection, to see 
whether it does not leave out of account sides and forces of 
human nature which \ve might turn to great use ; whether it 
would not be more operative if it were more complete. And 
I say that the English reliance on our religious organizations 
and on their ideas of human perfection just as they stand, is 
like our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on popu- 
lation, on coal, on wealth, — mere belief in machinery, and 
unfruitful ; and that it is wholesomely counteracted by culture, 
bent on seeing things as they are, and on drawing the human 
race onward to a more complete, an,harmonious perfection. 

Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of perfection, 
its desire simply to make reason and the will of God prevail. 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. lOI 

its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude toward all this 
machinery, even while it insists that it is machinery. Fanatics, 
seeing the mischief men do themselves by their blind belief 
in some machinery or other, — whether it is wealth and indus- 
trialism, or whether it is the cultivation of bodily strength and 
activity, or whether it is a political organization, or whether it is 
a religious organization, — oppose with might and main the 
tendency to this or that political and religious organization, or 
to games and athletic exercises, or to wealth and industrialism, 
and try violently to stop it. But the flexibility which sweetness 
and light give, and which is one of the rewards of culture pur- 
sued in good faith, enables a man to see that a tendency may 
be necessary, and even, as a preparation for something in the 
future, salutary, and yet that the generations or individuals who 
obey this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short of the 
hope of perfection by following it ; and that its mischiefs are 
to be criticised, lest it should take too firm a hold and last after 
it has served its purpose. 

Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at Paris, — and 
others have pointed out the same thing, — how necessary is the 
present great movement toward wealth and industrialism, in 
order to lay broad foundations of material well-being for the 
society of the future. The worst of these justifications is, that 
they are generally addressed to the very people engaged, body 
and soul, in the movement in question ; at all events, that they 
are always seized with the greatest avidity by these people, and 
taken by them as quite justifying their life ; and that thus they 
tend to harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits the 
necessity of the movement toward fortune-making and exagger- 



1 02 MA TTHE W ARNOLD. 

ated industrialism, readily allows that the future may derive 
benefit from it ; but insists, at the same time, that the passing 
generations of industrialists, — forming, for the most part, the 
stout main body of Philistinism, — are sacrificed to it. In the 
same way, the result of all the games and sports which occupy 
the passing generation of boys and young men may be the 
establishment of a better and sounder physical type for the 
future to work with. Culture does not set itself against the 
games and sports ; it congratulates the future, and hopes it will 
make a good use of its improved physical basis ; but it points 
out that our passing generation of boys and young men is, 
meantime, sacrificed^ Puritanism was perhaps necessary to 
develop the moral fibre of the English race. Nonconformity to 
break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination over men's minds 
and to prepare the way for freedom of thought in the distant 
future ; still, culture points out that the harmonious perfection 
of generations of Puritans and Nonconformists have been, in 
consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech may be necessary 
for the society of the future, but the young lions of the Daily 
Telegraph in the meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every 
man in his country's goverment may be necessary for the society 
of the future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are 
sacrificed. 

Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults : and she has 
heavily paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold 
upon the modern world. Yet we in Oxford, brought up amidst 
the beauty and sweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed 
to seize one truth : — the truth that beauty and sweetness are 
essential characters of a complete human perfection. When I 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. IO3 

insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradition of Oxford. I 
say boldly that this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our 
sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been at the 
bottom of our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our 
opposition to so many triumphant movements. And the senti- 
ment is true, and has never been wholly defeated, and has shown 
its power even in its defeat. We have not won our political 
battles, we have not carried our main points, we have not 
stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not marched victori- 
ously with the modern world ; but we have told silently upon 
the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of feeling 
which sap our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we 
have kept up our own communications with the future. Look at 
the course of the great movement which shook Oxford to its 
centre some thirty years ago ! It was directed, as any one who 
reads Dr. Newman's " Apology " may see, against what in one 
word may be called " Liberalism." Liberalism prevailed ; it 
was the appointed force to do the work of the hour ; it was 
necessary, it was inevitable that it should prevail. The Oxford 
movement was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on 
every shore : — 

Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? 

But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, and as 
it really broke the Oxford movement ? It was the great middle- 
class liberalism, which had for the cardinal points of its belief 
the Reform Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in politics ; 
in the social sphere, free trade, unrestricted competition, and the 
making of large industrial fortunes ; in the religious sphere, the 



\ di 



104 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 
rehgion. I do not say that other and more intelUgent forces 
than this were not opposed to the Oxford movement : but this 
was the force which really beat it ; this was the force which Dr. 
Newman felt himself fighting with ; this was the force which till 
only the other day seemed to be the paramount force in this 
country, and to be in possession of the future ; this was the 
/ J. force whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible 

"^Vjidmiration, and whose rule he was so horror-struck to see 
^ threatened. And where is this great force of Philistinism now ? 

'\s It is thrust into the second rank, it is become a power of yester- 
day, it has lost the future. A new power has suddenly appeared, 
a power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but which is 
certainly a wholly different force from middle-class liberalism ; 
different in its cardinal points of belief, different in its tenden- 
cies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither the legisla- 
tion of middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self-government 
of middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition of 
middle-class industrialists, nor the Dissidence of middle-class 
Dissent and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant reli- 
gion. I am not now praising this new force, or saying that its 
own ideals are better ; all I say is, that they are wholly different. 
And who will estimate how much the currents of feeling created 
by Dr Newman's movements, the keen desire for beauty and 
sweetness which it nourished, the deep aversion it manifested to 
the hardness and vulgarity of middle-class liberalism, the strong 
light it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle- 
class Protestantism, — who will estimate how much all these 
contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. I05 

mined the ground under the self-confident Uberalism of the last 
thirty years, and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse 
and supersession ? It is in this manner that the sentiment of 
Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner 
long may it continue to conquer ! 

In this manner it works to the same end as culture, and there 
is plenty of v/ork for it yet to do. I have said that the new and 
more democratic force which is now superseding our old middle- 
class liberalism cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its main 
tendencies still to form. We hear promises of its giving us 
administrative reform, law reform, reform of education, and I 
know not what ; but those promises come rather from its advo- 
cates, wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify it for 
superseding middle-class liberalism, than from clear tendencies 
which it has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has plenty 
of well-intentioned friends against whom culture may with 
advantage continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human perfec-^ 
tion ; that this is an inward spiritual activity, having for its I 
characters increased sweet?tess, increased light, increased life, in- I ^ 
creased sympathy, Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, . ~/^ 
the world of middle-class liberalism and the world of democracy, ^^ xJfi 
but who brings most of his ideas from the world of middle-class ^^JT 
liberalism in which he was bred, always inclines to inculcate * ' 
that faith in machinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen 
are so prone, and which has been the bane of middle-class 
liberalism. He complains with a sorrowful indignation of 
people who "appear to have no proper estimate of the value of 
the franchise;" he leads his disciples to believe — what the 
Englishman is always too ready to believe — that the having a 




I06 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

vote, like the having a large family, or a large business, or large 
muscles, has in itself some edifying and perfecting effect upon 
human nature. Or else he cries out to the democracy — "the 
men," as he calls them, " upon whose shoulders the greatness 
of England rests " — he cries out to them : " See what you 
have done I I look over this country and see the cities you have 
built, the railroads you have made, the manufactures you have 
produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest 
mercantile navy the world has ever seen ! I see that you have 
converted by your labors what was once a wilderness, these 
islands, into a fruitful garden ; I know that you have created 
this wealth, and are a nation whose name is a word of power 
throughout all the world." Why, this is just the very style of 
laudation with which Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Lowe debauch the 
minds of the middle-classes, and make such Philistines of them. 
It is the same fashion of teaching a man to value himself not 
on what he />, not on his progress in sweetness and light, but on 
the number of railroads he has constructed, or the bigness of 
the tabernacle he has built. Only the middle-classes are told 
they have done it all with their energy, self-reliance, and capital, 
and the democracy are told they have done it all with their 
hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy to put its trust 
in achievements of this kind is merely training them to be 
Philistines to take the place of the Philistines whom they are 
superseding ; and they too, like the middle-class, will be en- 
couraged to sit down at the banquet of the future without having 
on a wedding garment, and nothing excellent can then come 
from them. Those who know their besetting faults, those who 
have watched them and listened to them, or those who will read 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 10/ 

the instructive account recently given of them by one of them- 
selves, the "Journeyman Engineer," will agree that the idea 
which culture sets before us of perfection — an increased 
spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness, 
increased light, increased life, increased sympathy — is an idea 
which the new democracy needs far more than the idea of the 
blessedness of the franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own 
industrial performances. 

Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading 
it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways 
which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though 
in this country they are novel and untried ways. I may call 
them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the" 
past, abstract systems of renovation applied wholesale, a new 
doctrine drawn up in black and white for elaborating down to 
the very smallest details a rational society for the future, — 
these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and 
other disciples of Comte — one of them IMr. Congreve, is an old 
acquaintance of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity of 
publicly expressing my respect for his talents and character — 
re among the friends of democracy who are for leading it in 
paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very hostile to 
culture, and from a natural enough motive ; for culture is the 
eternal opponent of the two things which are the signal marks 
^ ^ ol[_J acobinism, — its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract 
system. Culture is always assigning to system-makers and 
systems a smaller share in the bent of human destiny than their 
friends like. A current in people's minds sets toward new 
ideas ; people are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of Phil- 




I08 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

istine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other ; and some man, 
some Bentham or Comte, who has the real merit of having early 
and strongly felt and helped the new current, but who brings 
plenty of narrowness and mistakes of his own into his feeling 
and help of it, is credited with being the author of the whole 
current, the fit person to be entrusted with its regulation and to 
guide the human race. 

The excellent . German historian of the mythology of Rome, 
Preller, relating the introduction at Rome under the Tarquins 
of the worship of Apollo, the god of light, healing, and recon- 
ciliation, will have us observe that it was not so much the Tar- 
quins who brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, as a 
current in the mind of the Roman people which set powerfully 
at that time toward a new worship of this kind, and away from 
the old run of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar 
way culture directs our attention to the natural current there is 
in human affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let 
us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings. It makes 
us see, not only his good side, but also how much in him was of 
necessity limited and transient ; nay, it even feels a pleasure, a 
sense of an increased freedom and of an ampler future, in so 
doing. 

I remember when I was under the influence of a mind to 
which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind of a man who 
was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the 
most considerable, it seems to me, whom America has yet pro- 
duced, — Benjamin Franklin, — I remember the relief with 
which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable 
common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new version 



SIVEETA'ESS AND LIGHT. lOQ 

of the Book of Job, to replace the old version, the style of 
\vhich, says Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less 
agreeable. " I give," he continues, " a few verses, which may 
serve as a sample of the kind of version I would recommend." 
We all recollect the famous verse in our translation : " Then 
Satan answered the Lord and said : ' Doth Job fear God for 
nought ? ' " Franklin makes this : " Does Your Majesty imag- 
ine that Job's good conduct is the effect of mere personal 
attachment and affection ? " I well remember how when first I 
read that, I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself : 
"After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's 
victorious good-sense ! " So, after hearing Bentham cried 
loudly up as the renovator of modern society, and Bentham's 
mind and ideas proposed as the rulers of our future, I opened 
the " Dentology." There I read : "While Xenophon was writing 
his history and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato 
were talking nonsense under pretence of talking wisdom and 
morality. This morality of theirs consisted in words ; this 
wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters known to every 
man's experience." From the moment of reading that I am 
delivered from the bondage of Bentham ! the fanaticism of his 
adherents can touch me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of his 
mind and ideas for supplying the rule of human society, for 
perfection. 

Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a system, 
of disciples, of a school ; with men like Comte, or the late Mr. 
Buckle, or Mr. Mill. However much it may find to admire in 
these personages, or in some of them, it nevertheless remembers 
the text : " Be not ye called Rabbi ! " and it soon passes on 



no MA TTHE W ARNOLD. 

from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi ; it does not 
want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit of a future and still 
unreached perfection ; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand 
for perfection, that they may with the more authority recast the 
world ; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture — eternally passing 
onward and seeking — is an impertinence and an offence. But 
culture, just because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to 
impose on us a man with limitations and errors of his own 
along with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does 
the world and Jacobinism itself a service. 

So, too. Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past and of 
those whom it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away 
with the inexhaustible indulgence proper to culture, the consid- 
eration of circumstances, the severe judgment of actions joined 
to the merciful judgment of persons. " The man of culture is 
in politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, " one of the poorest 
mortals alive ! " Mr. Frederic Harrison wants to be doing 
business, and he complains that the man of culture stops him 
with a " turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, and 
indecision in action." Of what use is culture, he asks, except 
for " a critic of new books or a professor of hdks-Iettres ? " 
Why, it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exasperation 
which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses, through the whole 
production in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that question, 
it reminds us that the perfection of human nature is sweetness 
and light. It' is of use, because, like religion — that other effort 
after perfection, — it testifies that, where bitter envying and strife 
are, there is confusion and every evil work. 

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. Ill 

light. He who works for sweetness and Hght, works to make 
reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for 
machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. 
Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred ; culture 
has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It 
has one even yet greater! — the passion for making them 
prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man ; 
it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imper- 
fect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are 
touched with sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from 
saying that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither 
have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis, 
must have sweetness and light for as many as possible. Again 
and again I have insisted how those are the happy moments of 
humanity, how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, 
hov*' those are the flowering times for literature and art and all 
the creative power of genius, when there is a national glow of 
life and thought, when the whole of society is in the fullest 
measure permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent 
and alive. Only it must be real thought and real beauty ; real 
sweetness and real light. Plenty of people will try to give the 
masses, as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and 
adapted in the way they think proper for the actual condition 
of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an example 
of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try 
to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments 
constituting the creed of their own profession or part}'. Our 
religious and political organizations give an example of this way 
of working on the masses, I condemn neither way ; but culture 



112 MATTHEW ARNOLD. ' 

works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of 
inferior classes ; it does not try to win them for this or that sect 
of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. It 
seeks to do away with classes ; to make the best that has been 
taught and known in the world current everywhere ; to make all 
men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they 
may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely, — nourished, and 
not bound by them. 

This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true 
apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who 
have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying 
from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the 
best ideas of their time ; who have labored to divest knowledge 
of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, 
exclusive ; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique 
of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best 
knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, 
of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in the Middle 
Ages, in spite of all his imperfections ; and thence the boundless 
emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were 
Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century; 
and their services to Germany were in this way inestimably 
precious. Generations will pass, and literar}^ monuments will 
accumulate, and works far more perfect than the works of 
Lessing and Herder will be produced in Germany ; and yet the 
names of these two men will fill a German with a reverence and 
enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters will 
hardly awaken. And why? Because they humanized knowl- 
edge ; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence ; 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. II3 

because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, 
to make reason and the will of God prevail. With St. Augustine 
they said : " Let us not leave Thee alone to make in the secret 
of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the 
firmament, the division of light from darkness ; let the children 
of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine 
upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and 
announce the revolution of the times ; for the old qrder is 
passed, and the new arises; the night is spent, the day is come 
forth ; and thou shalt crown the year with thy blessing, when 
thou shalt send forth laborers into thy harvest sown by other 
hands than theirs ; when thou shalt send forth new laborers to 
new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet." 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. 



An AnuRESs Delivered at the Town Hall, Birmingham (October 5, 
1876), BY the Writer, as President of the Midland Institute. 



— r- 

BY JOHN MORLEY. 
(Born 1S38.) 






HE proceedings which have now been brought satis- 
factorily to an end, are of a kind which nobody who 
has sensibility as well as sense can take a part in 
without some emotion. An illustrious French phil- 
osopher, who happened to be an examiner of candidates for 
admission to the Polytechnic School, once confessed that, when 
a youth came before him eager to do his best, competently 
taught, and of an apt intelligence, he needed all his self-control 
to press back the tears from his eyes. Well, when we think 
how much industry, patience, and intelligent discipline ; how 
many hard hours of self-denying toil ; how many temptations to 
worthless pleasures resisted ; how much steadfast feeling for 
things that are honest and true and of good report — are all 
represented by the young men and young women to whom I 
have had the honor of giving your prizes to-night, we must all 
feel our hearts warmed and gladdened in generous sympathy 
114 



ON POPULAR CUL TUNE. 1 1 5 

with so much excellence, so many good hopes, and so honorable 
a display of those qualities which make life better worth having 
for ourselves, and are so likely to make the world better worth 
living in for those who are to come after us. 

If a prize-giving is always an occasion of lively satisfaction, 
my own satisfaction is all the greater at this moment, because 
your Institute, which is doing such good work in the world, and 
is in every respect so prosperous and so flourishing, is the crea- 
tion of the people of your own district, without subsidy and 
without direction either from London, or from Oxford, or from 
Cambridge, or from any other centre whatever. Nobody in this 
town at any rate needs any argument of mine to persuade him 
that we can only be sure of advancing all kinds of knowledge, 
and developing our national "life in all its plenitude and variety, 
on condition of multiplying these local centres both of secon- 
dary and higher education, and encouraging each of them to fight 
its own battle and do its work in its own way. For my own 
part I look with the utmost dismay at the concentration, not 
only of population, but of the treasures of instruction, in our 
vast city on the banks of the Thames. At Birmingham, as I am 
informed, one has not far to look for an example of this. One 
of the branches of your multifarious trades in this town is the 
manufacture of jewellery. Some of it is said commonly to be 
wanting in taste, elegance, skill ; though some of it also — if I 
am not misinformed — is good enough to be passed off at Rome 
and at Paris, even to connoisseurs, as of Roman or French pro- 
duction. Now the nation possesses a most superb collection of 
all that is excellent and beautiful in jewellers' work. When I 
say that the nation possesses it, I mean that London possesses 



Il6 JOHN MORLEY. 

it. The University of Oxford, by the way, has also purchased 
a portion, but that is not at present accessible. If one of your 
craftsmen in that kind wants to profit by these admirable 
models, he must go to London. What happens is that he goes 
to the cajDital and stays there. Its superficial attractions are too 
strong for him. You lose a clever workman and a citizen, and 
he adds one more atom to that huge, overgrown, and unwieldy 
community. Now, why, in the name of common-sense, should 
not a portion of the Castellani collection pass six months of the 
year in Birmingham, the very place of all others where it is most 
likely to be of real service, and to make an effective mark on 
the national taste ? ^ 

1 Sir Henry Cole, C. B., writes to the Times (Oct. 13th) on this suggestion as 
follows: — "In justice to the Lords President of the Council on Education, I hope 
you will allow me the opportunity of stating that from 1S55 the Science and Art 
Department has done its very utmost to induce schools of art to receive deposits of 
works of art for study and popular examination, and to circulate its choicest objects 
useful to manufacturing industry. In corroboration of this assertion, please to turn 
to p. 435 of the Twenty-second Report of the Department, just issued. You will 
there find that upward of 26,907 objects of art, besides 23,911 paintings and drawings, 
have been circulated since 1S3 5, and in some cases have been left for several months 
for exhibition in the localities. They have been seen by more than 6,000,000 of visit- 
ors, besides having been copied by students, etc., and the localities have taken the great 
sum of £116,182 for showing them. 

" The Department besides has tried every efficient means to induce other public 
institutions, which are absolutely choked with superfluous specimens, to concur in a 
general principle of circulating the nation's works of art, but without success. 

" The chief of our national storehouses of works of art, actually repudiates the 
idea that its objects are collected for purposes of education, and declares that they 
are only ' things rare and curious,' the very reverse of what common-sense says they 
are. 

" Further, the Department, to tempt schools of art to acquire objects permanently 
for art museums attached to them, offered a grant in aid, of 5c per cent, of the cost 
price of the objects." 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. WJ 

To pass on to the more general remarks which j-ou are accus- 
tomed to expect from the President of the Institute on this occa- 
sion. When I consulted one of your townsmen as to the subject 
which he thought would be most useful and most interesting to 
you, he said : " Pray talk about any thing you ^i^lease, if it is 
only not Education." There is a saying that there are two kinds 
of foolish people in the world, those who give advice and those 
who do not take it. My friend and I in this matter represent 
these two interesting divisions of the race, for in spite of what 
he said, it is upon Education after all that I propose to offer you 
some short observations. You will believe it no affectation on 
my part, when I say that I shall do so with the sincerest willing- 
ness to be corrected by those of wider practical experience in 
teaching. I am well aware, too, that I have very little that is 
new to say, but education is one of those matters on which 
much that has already been said, will long bear saying over and 
over again. 

I have been looking through the report of your classes, and 
two things have rather struck me, which I will mention. One of 
them is the very large attendance in the French classes. This 
appears a singularly satisfactory thing, because you could 
scarcely do a hard-working man of whatever class a greater ser- 
vice than to give him easy access to French literature. Montes- 
quieu used to say that he had never known a pain or a distress 
which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good book ; and 
perhaps it is no more of an exaggeration to say that a man who 
can read French with comfort need never have a dull hour. 
Our own literature has assuredly many a kingly name. In 
boundless riches and infinite imaginative variety, there is no 



Il8 JOHN MORLEY. 

rival to Shakespeare in the world ; in energy and height and 
majesty Milton and Burke have no masters. But besides its 
great men of this loftier sort France has a long list of authors 
who have produced a literature whose chief mark is its agreea- 
bleness. As Jias been so often said, the genius of the French 
language is its clearness, firmness, and order; to this clearness 
certain circumstances in the history of French society have 
added the delightful qualities of liveliness in union with urbanity. 
Now, as one of the most important parts of popular education 
is to put people in the way of amusing and refreshing them- 
selves in a rational rather than an irrational manner, it is a great 
gain to have given them the key to the most amusing and 
refreshing set of books in the world. 

And here, perhaps, I may be permitted to remark, that it 
seems a pity that Racine is so constantly used as a school-book, 
instead of some of the moderns who are nearer to ourselves in 
ideas and manners. Racine is a great and admirable writer ; 
but what you want for ordinary readers who have not much time, 
and whose faculties of attention are already largely exhausted by 
the more important industry of the day, is a book which brings 
literature more close to actual life than such a poet as Racine 
does. This is exactly one of the gifts and charms of modern 
French. To put what I mean very shortly, I would say, by way 
of illustration, that a man who could read the essays of Ste. 
Beuve with moderate comfort would have in his hands — of 
course I am now speaking of the active and busy part of the 
world, not of bookmen and students, — would, I say, have in his 
hands one of the very best instruments that I can think of; such 
work is exquisite and instructive in itself, it is a model of 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. II9 

gracious writing, it is full of ideas, it breathes the happiest 
moods over us, and it is the most suggestive of guides, for those 
who have the capacity of extensive interests, to all the greater 
spheres of thought and history. 

This word brings me back to the second fact that has struck 
me in your report, and it is this. The subject of English 
history has apparently so little popularity, that the class is as 
near being a failure as anything connected with the Midland 
Institute can be. On the whole, whatever may be the ability 
and the zeal of the teacher, this is, in my humble judgment, 
neither very surprising nor particularly mortifying, if we think 
what history in the established conception of it means. How 
are we to expect workmen to make their way through constitu- 
tional antiquities, through the labyrinthine shifts of party 
intrigue at home, and through the entanglements of intricate 
diplomacy abroad — "shallow village tales," as Emerson calls 
them ? These studies are fit enough for professed students of 
the special subject, but such exploration is for the ordinary run 
of men and women impossible, and I do not know that it would 
lead them into very fruitful lands even if it were easy. You 
know what the great Duke of Marlborough said : that he had 
learned all the history he ever knew out of Shakespeare's histori- 
cal plays. I have long thought that if we persuaded those classes 
who have to fight their own little Battles of Blenheim for bread 
every daj-, to make such a beginning of history as is furnished 
by Shakespeare's plays and Scott's novels, w^e should have done 
more to imbue them with a real interest in the past of mankind, 
than if he had taken them through a course of Hume and 
Smollett, or Hallam on the English Constitution, or even the 



I20 JOHN MO RLE Y. 

dazzling Macaulay. What I for one should like to see in such 
an institution as this, would be an attempt to compress the 
whole history of England into a dozen or fifteen lectures — 
lectures of course accompanied by catechetical instruction. I 
am not so extravagant as to dream that a short general course 
of this kind would be enough to go over so many of the details 
as it is desirable for men to know, but details in popular instruc- 
tion, though not in study of the writer or the university profes- 
sor, are only important after you have imparted the largest 
general truths. It is the general truths that stir a life-like curi- 
osity as to the particulars which they are the means of lighting 
up. Now this short course would be quite enough to present in 
a bold outline — and it need not be a whit the less true and real 
for being both bold and rapid — the great chains of events and 
the decisive movements, that have made of ourselves and our 
institutions what we and what they are — the Teutonic begin- 
nings, the Conquest, the Great Charter, the Hundred Years' 
War, the Reformation, the Civil Wars and the Revolution, the 
Emancipation of the American Colonies from the Monarchy. If 
this course were framed and filled in with a true social intelli- 
gence, men would find that they had at the end of it a fair idea 
— an idea that might be of great value, and at any rate an idea 
much to be preferred to that blank ignorance which is in so 
many cases practically the only alternative — of the large issues 
of our past, of the antagonistic principles that strove with one 
another for mastery, of the chief material forces and moral 
currents of successive ages, and, above all, of those great men 
and our fathers that begat us — the Pyms, the Hampdens, the 
Cromwells, the Chathams — yes, and shall we not say the Wash- 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. 121 

iiigtons, — to whose sagacity, bravery, and unquenchable ardor 
for justice and order and equal laws all our English-speaking 
peoples owe a debt that can never be paid. 

Another point is worth thinking of, besides the reduction of 
history for your purposes to a comprehensive body of rightly 
grouped generalities. Dr. Arnold says somewhere, that he 
wishes the public might have a history of our present state of 
society traced backward. It is the present that really interests 
us ; it is the present that we seek to understand and to explain. 
I do not in the least want to know what happened in the past, 
except as it enables me to see my way more clearly through 
what is happening to-day. I want to know what men thought 
and did in the thirteenth century, not out of any dilettante or 
idle antiquarian's curiosity, but because the thirteenth century is 
at the root of what men think and do in the nineteenth. Well, 
then, it cannot be a bad educational rule to start from what is 
most interesting, and to work from that outward and backward. 
By beginning with the present, we see more clearly what are the 
two things best worth attending to in history — not party 
intrigues nor battles nor dynastic affairs, nor even many acts of 
Parliament, but the great movements of the economic forces of 
a society on the one hand, and on the other the forms of reli- 
gious opinion and ecclesiastical organization. All the rest are 
important, but their importance is subsidiary. 

Allow me to make one more remark on this subject. If a 
dozen or a score of wise lectures would suffice for a general 
picture of the various phrases through which our own society 
has passed, there ought to be added to the course of popular 
instruction as many lectures more, which would trace the 



122 JOHN MO R LEY. 

history, not of England, but of the world. And the history of 
the world ought to go before the history of England. This is no 
paradox, but the deliberate opinion of many of those who 
have thought most deeply about the far-reaching chain of human 
progress. When 1 was on a visit to the United States some 
years ago — things may have improved since then — I could not 
help noticing that the history classes in their common-schools 
all began their work with the year 1776, when the American 
colonies formed themselves into an independent confederacy. 
The teaching assumed that the creation of the universe occurred 
about that date. What could be more absurd, more narrow and 
narrowing, more mischievously misleadnig as to the whole pur- 
port and significance of history ? As if the laws, the representa- 
tive institutions, the religious uses, the scientific methods, the 
moral ideas, which give to an American citizen his character and 
mental habits and social surroundings, had not all their roots in 
the deeds and thoughts of wise and brave men, who lived in 
centuries which are of course just as much the inheritance of the 
vast continent of the West, as they are of the little island 
whence its first colonizers sailed forth. 

Well, there is something nearly as absurd, if not quite, in our 
common plan of taking for granted that people should begin 
their reading of histor}-, not in 1776, but in 1066. As if this 
could bring into our minds what is after all the greatest lesson 
of history, namely, the fact of its oneness ; of the independence 
of all the elements that have in the course of long ages made 
the European of to-day what we see him to be. It is no doubt 
necessary for clear and definite comprehension to isolate your 
phenomenon, and to follow the stream of our own history 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. 1 23 

separatel}'. But that cannot be enough. We must also see 
that this stream is the effluent of a far broader and mightier 
flood — whose springs and sources and great tributaries lay 
higher up in the history of mankind. 

" We are learning," says Mr. Freeman, whose little book on the 
"Unity of History" I cannot be wrong in warmly recommend- 
ing even to the busiest among you, " that European history, 
from its first glimmerings to our own day, is one unbroken 
drama, no part of which can be rightly understood without 
reference to the other parts which come before and after it. 
We are learning that of this great drama Rome is the centre, 
the point to which all roads lead and from which all roads lead 
no less. The world of independent Greece stands on one side 
of it ; the world of moderri Europe stands on another. But the 
history alike of the great centre itself, and of its satellites on 
either side, can never be fully grasped except from a point of 
view wide enough to take in the whole group, and to mark the 
relations of each of its members to the centre and to one 
another." 

Now the counsel which our learned historian thus urges upon 
the scholar and the leisured student, equally represents the 
point of view^ which is proper for the more numerous classes of 
whom we are thinking to-night. The scale will have to be 
reduced ; all save the very broadest aspects of things will have 
to be left out; none save the highest ranges and the streams of 
most copious volume will find a place in that map. Small as is 
the scale and many as are its omissions, yet if a man has intelli- 
gently followed the very shortest course of universal history, it 
will be the fault of his teacher if he has not acquired an 



124 JOHN MORLEY. 

impressive conception, which will never be effaced, of the desti- 
nies of man upon the earth ; of the mighty confluence of forces 
working on from age to age, which have their meeting in every 
one of us here to-night ; of the order in which each state of 
society has followed its foregoer, according to great and change- 
less laws " embracing all things and all times ; " of the thousand 
faithful hands that have, one after another, each in their several 
degrees, orders, and capacities, trimmed the silver lamp of 
knowledge and kept its sacred flame bright from generation to 
generation and age to age, now in one land and now in another, 
from its early spark among far-of^ dim Chaldeans down to 
Goethe and Faraday and Darwin and all the other good workers 
of our own day. 

The shortest course of universal history will let him see 
how he owes to the Greek civilization, on the shores of the 
Mediterranean two thousand years back, a debt extending from 
the architectural forms of this very Town Hall to some of the 
most systematic operations of his own mind ; will let him see 
the forum of Rome, its roads and its gates — 

" What conflux issuing forth or entering in, 
Praetors, Proconsuls to their provinces 
Hasting or on return, in robs of state, — " 

all busily welding an empire together in a marvellous framework 
of citizenship, manners, and laws, that laid assured foundations 
for a still higher civilization that was to come after. He 
will learn how when the Roman Empire declined, then at 
Damascus and Bagdad and Seville the Mahometan conquerors 
took up the torch of science and learning, and handed it on to 
Western Europe when the new generations were ready. He will 



ON- POPULAR CULTURE. 125 

learn how in the meantime, during ages which we both wrongly 
and ungratefully call dark, from Rome again, that other great 
organization, the mediaeval Church, had arisen, which amid 
many imperfections and some crimes did a work that no glory 
of physical science can equal, and no instrument of physical 
science can compass, in purifying men's appetites, in setting 
discipline and direction on their lives, and in offering to 
humanity new types of moral obligation and fairer ideals of 
saintly perfection, whose light still shines like a star to guide 
our own poor voyages. It is only by this contemplation of the 
life of our race as a whole that men see the beginnings and the 
ends of things ; learn not to be near-sighted in history, but to 
look before and after ; see their own part and lot in the rising 
up and going down of empires and faiths since first recorded 
time began ; and what I am contending for is that even if you 
can take your young men and women no further than the mere 
vestibule of this ancient and ever venerable temple of many 
marvels, you will have opened to them the way to a kind of 
knowledge that not only enlightens the understanding, but 
enriches the character — which is a higher thing than mere 
intellect — and makes it constantly alive with the spirit of 
beneficence, 

I know it is said that such a view of collective history is true, 
but that you will never get plain people to respond to it ; it is a 
thing for intellectual dilettanti and moralizing virtuosi. Well, 
we do not know, because we have never yet honestly tried, what 
the commonest people will or will not respond to. When Sir 
Richard Wallace's pictures were being exhibited at Bethnal 
Green, after people had said that the workers had no souls for 



126 JOHN MORLEY. 

art and would not appreciate its treasures, a story is told of a 
female in very poor clothes gazing intently at a picture of the 
Infant Jesus in the arms of his Mother, and then exclaiming, 
" Who would not try to be a good woman, who had such a child as 
that ? " We have never yet, I say, tried the height and pitch to 
which our people are capable of rising. 

I have thought it well to take this opportunity of saying a 
word for history, because I cannot help thinking that one of the 
most narrow, and what will eventually be one of the most im- 
poverishing, characteristics of our day is the excessive supremacy 
claimed for physical science. This is partly due, no doubt, to a 
most wholesome reaction against the excessive supremacy that 
has hitherto been claimed for literature, and held by literature, 
in our schools and universities. At the same time, it is well to 
remember that the historic sciences are making strides not 
unworthy of being compared with those of the physical sciences, 
and not only is there room for both, but any system is radically 
wrong which excludes or depresses either to the advantage of 
the other.^ 

And now there is another idea which I should like to throw 
out, if you will not think it too tedious and too special. It is an 
old saying that, after all, the great end and aim of the British 

1 A x,ery eminent physicist writes to me on this passage : " I cannot help smiling 
when I think of the place of physical science in the endowed schools," etc. My 
reference was to the great prevalence of such assertions as that human progress 
depends upon increase of our knowledge of the conditions of material phenomena 
(Dr. Draper, for instance, lays this down as a fundamental axiom of history) : as if 
moral a'lvance, the progressive elevation of types of character and ethical ideals, were 
not at least an equally important cause of improvement in civilization. The type of' 
Saint Vincent de Paul is plainly as indispensible to progress as the t3'pe of Newton. 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. 12/ 

Constitution is to get twelve honest men into a box. That is 
really a very sensible way of putting the theory, that the first end 
of government is to give security to life and property, and to 
make people keep their contracts. But with this view it is not 
only important that you should get twelve honest men into a 
box : the twelve honest men must have in their heads some 
notions as to what constitutes evidence. Now it is surely a 
striking thing that while we are so careful to teach physical 
science and literature ; while men want to be endowed in order 
to have leisure to explore our spinal cords, and to observe the 
locomotor system of Medusae, — and I have no objection 
against those who urge on all these studies, — yet there is no 
systematic teaching, very often no teaching at all, in the princi- 
ples of evidence and reasoning, even for the bulk of those who 
would be very much offended if we were to say that they are not 
educated. Of course I use the term evidence in a wider sense 
than the testimony in crimes and contracts, and the other busi- 
ness of courts of law. Questions of evidence are rising at every 
hour of the day. As Bentham says, it is a question of evidence 
with the cook whether the joint of meat is roasted enough. It 
has been excellently said that the principal and most character- 
istic difference between one human intellect and another consists 
in their ability to judge correctly of evidence. Most of us, Mr. 
Mill says, are very unsafe hands at estimating evidence, if 
appeal cannot be made to actual eyesight. Indeed, if we think 
of some of the tales that have been lately diverting the British 
Association, we might perhaps go further, and describe many of 
us as very bad hands at estimating evidence, even where appeal 
can be made to actual eyesight. Eyesight, in fact, is the least 



128 JOHN MORLEY. 

part of the matter. The senses are as often the tools as the 
guides of reason. One of the longest chapters in the history of 
vulgar error would contain the cases in which the eyes have 
only seen w-hat old prepossessions inspired them to see, and 
were blind to all that would have been fatal to the preposses- 
sions. " It is beyond all question or dispute," says Voltaire, 
" that magic words and ceremonies are quite capable of most 
effectually destroying a whole flock of sheep, if the words be 
accompanied by a sufficient quantity of arsenic."' Sorcery has 
no doubt been exploded — at least we assume that it has — but 
the temper that made men attribute all the efficacy to the magic 
words, and entirely overlook the arsenic, still prevails in a great 
host of moral and political affairs, into which it is not convenient 
to enter here; The stability of a government for instance is 
constantly set down to some ornamental part of it, when in fact 
the ornamental part has no more to do with stability than the 
incantations of the soothsayer. 

You have heard, again, that for many generations the people 
of the Isle of St. Kilda believed that the arrival of a ship in the 
harbor inflicted on the islanders epidemic colds in the head, and 
many ingenious reasons were from time to time devised by 
clever men why the ship should cause colds among the popula- 
tion. At last it occurred to somebody that the ship might not 
be the cause of the colds, but that both might be the common 
effects of some other cause, and it was then remembered that a 
ship could only enter the harbor when there was a strong north- 
east wind blowing. 

However faithful the observation, as soon as ever a man uses 
words he may begin at that moment to go wrong. " A village 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. 1 29 

apothecary," it has been said, " and if possible in a still greater 
degree, an experienced nurse, is seldom able to describe the 
plainest case without employing a phraseology of which every 
word is a theory ; the simplest narrative of the most illiterate 
observer involves more or less of hypothesis;" — yet both by 
the observer himself and by most of those who listen to him, 
each of these conjectural assumptions is treated as respectfully 
as if it were an established axiom. We are supposed to deny 
the possibility of a circumstance, when in truth we only deny 
the evidence alleged for it. We allow the excellence of reason- 
ing from certain data to captivate our belief in the truth of the 
data themselves, even when they are unproved and unprovable. 
There is no end, in short, of the ways in which men habitually 
go wrong in their reasoning, tacit or expressed. The greatest 
boon that any benefactor could confer on the human race would 
be to teach men — and especially women — to quantify their 
propositions. It sometimes seems as if Swift were right when 
he said that mankind were just as fit for flying as for thinking. 

Now it is quite true that mother-wit and the common 
experiences of life do often furnish people with a sort of shrewd 
and sound judgment that carries them very creditably through 
the world. They come to good conclusions, though perhaps 
they would give bad reasons for them if they were forced to find 
their reasons. But you cannot count upon mother-wit in every- 
body; perhaps not even in a majority. And then as for the 
experience of life, — there are a great many questions, and those 
of the deepest ultimate importance to mankind, in which the 
ordinary experience of life sheds no light, until it has been 
interrogated and interpreted by men with trained minds. " It 



I30 JOHN MO RLE Y. 

is far easier," as has been said, " to acquire facts than to judge 
what they prove." What is done in our systems of training to 
teach people how to judge what facts prove? Tliere is matlie- 
matics, no doubt ; anybody who has done even no more than the 
first book of Euclid's geometry, ought to have got into his head 
the notion of a demonstration, of the rigorously close connection 
between a conclusion and its premises, of the necessity of being 
able to show how each link in the chain comes to be where it is, 
and that it has a right to be there. This, however, is a long way 
from the facts of real life, and a man might well be a great 
geometer, and still be a thoroughly bad reasoner in practical 
questions. 

Again, in other of your classes, in chemistry, in astronomy, in 
natural history, besides acquiring groups of facts, the student 
has a glimpse of the method by which they were discovered, of 
the type of inference to which the discovery conforms, so that 
-the discovery of a new comet, the detection of a new species, the 
invention of a new chemical compound, — each becomes a 
lesson of the most beautiful and impressive kind in the art of 
reasoning. And it would be superfluous and impertinent for 
me here to point out how valuable such lessons are in the way 
of mental discipline, apart from the fruit they bear in other 
ways. But here again the relation to the judgments we have to 
form in the moral, political, practical sphere is too remote and 
too indirect. The judgments, in this region, of the most brilliant 
and successful explorers in physical science, seem to be exactly 
as liable to every kind of fallacy as those of other people. The 
application of scientific method and conception to society is yet 
in its infancy, and the " Novum Organum " or the " Principia " 



ON POPULAR CUL PURE. 1 3 I 

of moral and social phenomena will jDerhaps not be wholly 
disclosed to any of us now alive. In any case it is clear that 
for the purposes of such an institution as this, if the rules of 
evidence and proof and all the other safeguards for making your 
propositions true and relevant, are to be taught at all, they must 
be taught not only in au elementary form, but with illustrations 
that shall convey their own direct reference and application to 
practical life. If everybody could find time to master Mill's 
"■ Logic " or so instructive and interesting a book as Professor 
Jevons' " Principles of Science," a certain number at any rate 
of the bad mental habits of people would be cured ; and for 
those of you here who have leisure enough, and want to find a 
worthy keystone of your culture, it would be hard to find a 
better thing to do for the next six months than to work through 
one or both of the books I have just named — pen in hand. 
The ordinary text-books of formal logic do not seem to meet 
the special aim which I am now trying to impress as desirable — 
namely, the habit of valuing, not merely speculative or scientific 
truth, but the truth of practical life ; a practising of the intellect 
in forming and expressing the opinions and judgments that form 
the staple of our daily discourse. 

It is now accepted that the most effective way of learning a 
foreign language is to begin by reading books written in it, or by 
conversing in it — and then after a certain empirical familiarity 
with vocabulary and construction has been acquired, one may 
proceed to master the grammar. Just in the same way it would 
seem to be the best plan to approach the art of practical 
reasoning in concrete examples, in cases of actual occurrence 
and living interest ; and then after the processes of disentang- 



132 JOHN MORLEY. 

ling a complex group of propositions, of dividing and sifting, of 
scenting a fallacy, have all become familiar, it may be worth 
while to find names for them all, and to set out rules for reason- 
ing rightly, just as in the former illustration the rules of writing 
correctly follow a certain practice, rather than precede it. 

Now it has long seemed to me that the best way of teaching 
carefulness and precision in dealing with propositions might be 
found through the medium of the argumentation in the courts 
of justice. This is reasoning in real matter. There is a famous 
book well known to legal students — Smith's " Leading Cases " — 
which contains a selection of important decisions, and sets forth 
the grounds on which the courts arrived at them. I have often 
thought that a dozen or a score of cases might be collected 
from this book into a small volume, that would make such a 
manual as no other matter could, for opening plain men's eyes 
to the logical pitfalls among which they go stumbling and 
crashing, when they think they are disputing like Socrates or 
reasoning like Newton. They would see how a proposition or 
an expression that looks straightforward and unmistakable, is 
yet on examination found to be capable of bearing several 
distinct interpretations and meaning several distinct things ; how 
the same evidence may warrant different conclusions, and what 
kinds of evidence carry with them what degrees of validity; 
how certain sorts of facts can only be proved in one way, and 
certain other sorts of facts in some other way ; how necessary it 
is, before you set out, to know exactly what it is you intend to 
show, or what it is you intend to dispute ; how there may be 
many argumentative objections to a proposition, yet the balance 
be in favor of its adoption. It is from the generality of people 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. 1 33 

having neglected to practise the attention on these and the like 
matters, that interest and prejudice find so ready an instrument 
of sophistry in that very art of speech which ought to be the 
organ of reason and truth. To bring the matter to a point, 
then, I submit that it might be worth while in this and all such 
institutions to have a class for the study of logic, reasoning, 
evidence, and that such a class might well find its best material 
in selections from " Leading Cases," and from Bentham's 
" Rationale of Judicial Evidence," elucidated by those special 
sections in Mill's " Logic," or smaller manuals such as those of 
Mr. Fowler, the Oxford Professor of Logic, which treat of the 
department of fallacies. Perhaps Bentham's " Book of Falla- 
cies" is too political for me to commend it to you here. But if 
there happens to be any one in Birmingham who is fond of 
meeting proposed changes by saying that they are Utopian; that 
they are good in theory, but bad in practice ; that they are too 
good to be realized, and so forth, then I can promise him that 
he will in that book hear of something very much to his advan- 
tage.-' 

An incidental advantage — which is worth mentioning — of 
making legal instances the medium of instruction in practical 
logic, would be that people would — not learn, law, of course, in 

1 This suggestion has fortunately found favor in a quarter where shrewd and 
critical common-sense is never wanting. The Economist (Oct. 14th) writes : — " Such 
a text-book commented on to a class by a man trained to estimate the value of evi- 
dence, would form a most valuable study, and not, we should imagine, at all less 
fascinating than valuable. Of course the class suggested would not be a class in 
English law, but in the principles on which evidence should be estimated, and the 
special errors to which, in common life, average minds are most liable. We regard 
this suggestion as a most useful one, and as one which would not only greatly contrib- 
ute to the educational worth of an institute for adults, but also to its popularity." . 



134 JOHN MO R LEY. 

the present state of our system, but they would have their 
attention called in a direct and business-like way to the lawyer's 
point of view, and those features of procedure in which every 
man and woman in the land has so immediate an interest. 
Perhaps if people interested themselves more seriously than is 
implied by reading famous cases in the newspapers, we should 
get rid, for one thing, of the rule which makes the accused 
person in a criminal case incompetent to testify ; and, for 
another, of that infamous license of cross-examination to credit, 
which is not only barbarous to those who have to submit to it, 
but leads to constant miscarriage of justice in the case of those 
who, rather than submit to it, will suffer wrong. 

It will be said, I dare sa}^, that overmuch scruple about our 
propositions and the evidence for them will reduce men, espe- 
cially the young, to the intellectual condition of the great phil- 
osopher, Marphurius, in Moliere's comedy. Marphurius rebukes 
Saganarelle for saying he had come into the room : " What you 
should say is, that it seems I am come into the room." Instead 
of the downright affirmation and burly negations so becoming to 
Britons, he would bring down all our propositions to the attenu- 
ation of a possibility or a perhaps. We need not fear such an 
end. The exigencies of practical affairs will not allow this 
endless balancing. They are always driving men to the other 
extreme, making us like the new judge, who first heard the 
counsel on one side and made up his mind on the merits of the 
case, until the turn of the opposing counsel came, and then the 
new counsel filled the judge with so many doubts and perplex- 
ities, that he suddenly vowed that nothing would induce him to 
pay any heed to evidence again as long as he lived. 



ON rOrULAR CULTURE. 1 35 

I do not doubt that I shall be blamed in what I have said 
about French, and about history, for encouraging a spirit of 
superficiality, and of contentment with worthless smatterings of 
things. To this I should answer that, as Archbishop Whately 
pointed out long ago, it is a fallacy to mistake general truths for 
superficial truths, or a knowledge of the leading propositions of 
a subject for a superficial knowledge. " To have a general 
knowledge of a subject is to know only its leading truths, but to 
know these thoroughly, so as to have a true conception of the 
subject in its great features." {Mill.) And I need not point 
out that instruction may be of the most general kind, and still 
possess that most important quality of all instruction — namely, 
being incthodical. 

I think popular instruction has been made much more repul- 
sive than it need have been, and more repulsive than it ought to 
have been, because those who have had the control of the 
movement for the last fifty years, have been too anxious to make 
the type of popular instruction conform to the type of academic 
instruction proper to learned men. The principles of instruc- 
tion have been too rigorously ascetic and puritanical, and instead 
of making the access to knowledge as easy as possible, we have 
delighted in forcing every pilgrim to make his journey to the 
shrine of the Muses with a hair shirt on his back and peas in 
his shoes. Nobody would say that Macaulay had a superficial 
knowledge of the things best worth knowing in ancient litera- 
ture, yet we have his own confession that when he became a 
busy man — as you are all busy — then he read his classics, not 
like a collegian, but like a man of the world ; if he did not know 
a word he passed it over, and if a passage refused to give up its 



136 JOHN MO RLE Y. 

meaning at the second reading, then he let it alone. Now the 
aims of academic education and those of popular education are 
— it is obvious if you come to think of it — quite different. 
The end of the one is rather to increase knowledge ; of the 
other to diffuse it, and to increase men's interest in what is 
already known. If, therefore, I am for making certain kinds of 
instruction as general as they can possibly be made in these 
local centres, I should give to the old seats of learning a very 
special function indeed. 

It would be absurd to attempt to discuss academic organiza- 
tion here at this hour. I only want to ask you as politicians 
whose representatives in Parliament will ultimately settle the 
matter — to reflect whether the money now consumed in idle 
fellowships might not be more profitably employed in endowing 
enquirers. The favorite argument of those who support prize 
fellowships is that they are the only means by which a child of 
the working-cla^s can raise himself to the highest position in the 
land. My answer to this would be that, in the first place, it is 
of questionable expediency to invite the cleverest members of 
any class to leave it — instead of makiog their abilities available 
in it, and so raising the whole class along with, and by means of, 
their own rise. Second, these prize fellowships will continue, 
and must continue, to be carried off by those who can afford 
time and money to educate their sons for the competition. 
Third, I doubt the expediency — and the history of Oxford 
within the last twenty-five years strikingly confirms this doubt — 
of giving to a young man of any class what is practically a pre- 
mium on indolence, and the removal of a motive to self-reliant 
and energetic spirit of enterprise. The best thing that I can 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. 1 37 

think of as happening to a young man is this : that he should 
have been educated at a day-school in his own town ; that he 
should have opportunities of following also the higher educa- 
tion in his own town ; and that at the earliest convenient time 
he should be taught to earn his own living. 

The universities might then be left to their proper business of 
study. Knov/ledge for its own sake is clearly an object which 
only a very small portion of society can be spared to pursue ; 
only a very few men in a generation have that devouring passion 
for knowing, which is the true inspirer of fruitful study and 
exploration. Even if the passion were more common than it 
is, the world could not afford on any very large scale that men 
should indulge in it : the great business of the world has to be 
carried on. One of the greatest of all hindrances to making 
things better, is the habit of taking for granted that plans or 
ideas, simply because they are different and approach the matter 
from different sides, are therefore the rivals and enemies, instead 
of being the friends and complements of one another. But a 
great and wealthy society like ours ought very well to be able 
to nourish one or two great seats for the augmentation of true 
learning, and at the same time make sure that young men — and 
again I say, especially young women — should have a good edu- 
cation of the higher kind within reach of their own hearths. 

It is not necessary for me here, I believe, to dwell upon any 
of the great commonplaces which the follower of knowledge 
does well to keep always before his eyes, and which represent 
the wisdom of many generations of studious experience. You 
may have often heard from others, or may have found out, how 
good it is to have on your shelves, however scantily furnished 



1 3 8 JOHN MO RLE Y. 

they may be, three or four of those books, to which it is well to 
give ten minutes every morning, before going down into ihe 
battle and choking dust of the day. Men will name these 
books for themselves. One will choose the Bible, another 
Goethe, one the " Imitation of Christ," another Wordsworth. 
Perhaps it matters little what it be, so long as your writer has 
cheerful seriousness, elevation, calm, and, above all, a sense of 
size and strength, which shall open out the day before you and 
bestow gifts of fortitude and mastery. 

Then, to turn to the intellectual side. You know as well as 
I or any one can tell you, that knowledge is worth little until 
you have made it so perfectly your own, as to be capable of 
reproducing it in precise and definite form. Goethe said that in 
the end we only retain of our studies, after all, what we prac- 
tically employ of them. And it is at least well that in our 
serious studies we should have the possibility of practically 
turning them to a definite destination, clearly before our eyes. 
Nobody can be sure that he has got clear ideas on a subject, 
unless he has tried to put them down on a piece of paper in 
independent words of his own. It is an excellent jDlan, too, 
when you have read a good book, to sit down and write a short 
abstract of what you can remember of it. It is a still better 
plan, if you can make up your minds to a slight extra labor, to 
do wh^t Lord Strafford, and Gibbon, and Daniel Webster did. 
After glancing over the title, subject, or design of a book, these 
eminent men would take a pen and write roughly what questions 
they expected to find answered in it, what difficulties solved, 
what kind of information imparted. Such practices keep us 
from reading with the eye only, gliding vaguely over the page 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. 1 39 

and they help us to place our new acquisitions in relation with 
what we knew before. It is almost always worth while to read 
a thing twice over, to make sure that nothing has been missed 
or dropped on the way, or wrongly conceived or interpreted. 
And if the subject be serious, it is often well to let an interval 
elapse. Ideas, relations, statements of fact, are not to be 
taken by storm. We have to steep them in the mind, in the 
hope of thus extracting their inmost essence and significance. 
If one lets an interval pass, and then returns, it is surprising 
how clear and ripe that has become, which, when we left it, 
seemed crude, obscure, full of perplexity. 

All this takes trouble, no doubt, but then it will not do to deal 
with ideas that we find in books or elsewhere as a certain bird 
does with its eggs — leave them in the sand for the sun to hatch 
and chance to rear. People who follow this plan possess nothing 
better than ideas half-hatched, and convictions reared by acci- 
dent. They are like a man who should pace up and down the 
world in the delusion that he is clad in sumptuous robes of 
purple and velvet, when in truth he is only half-covered by the 
rags and tatters of other people's cast-off clothes. 

Apart from such mechanical devices as these I have mentioned, 
there are habits and customary attitudes of mind which a con- 
scientious reader will practice, if he desires to get out of a book 
still greater benefits than the writer of it may have designed or 
thought of. For example, he should never be content with mere 
aggressive and negatory criticism of the page before him. The 
page may be open to such criticism, and in that case it is natural 
to indulge in it ; but the reader will often find an unexpected 
profit by asking himself — What does this error teach me ? How 



I40 JOHN MORLEY. 

comes that fallacj' to be here ? How came the writer to fall into 
this defect of taste ? To ask such questions gives a reader a far 
healthier tone of mind in the long run, more seriousness, more 
depth, more moderation of judgment, more insight into other 
men's ways of thinking as well as into his own, than any amount 
of impatient condemnation and hasty denial, even when both 
condemnation and denial may be in their place. 

Again, let us not be too ready to detect an inconsistency in 
our author, but rather let us teach ourselves to distinguish 
between inconsistency and having two sides to an opinion. 
" Before I admit that two and two are four," some one said, " I 
must first know to what use you are going to put the proposition." 
That is to say, even the plainest proposition needs to be stated 
with a view to the drift of the discussion in hand, or with a view 
to some special part of the discussion. When the turn of some 
other part of the matter comes, it will be convenient and often 
necessary to bring out into full light another side of your opinion, 
not contradictory, but complementary, and the great distinction 
of a candid disputant or of a reader of good faith, is his willing- 
ness to take pains to see the points of reconciliation among 
different aspects and different expressions of what is substan- 
tially the same judgment. 

Then, again, nobody here needs to be reminded that the great 
successes of the world have been affairs of a second, a third, nay, 
a fiftieth trial. The history of literature, of science, of art, of 
industrial achievements, — all testify to the truth that success is 
only the last term of what looked like a series of failures. 
What is true of the great achievements of history, is true also 
of the little achievements of the observant cultivator of his own 



ON POPULAR CULTURE. I4I 

understanding. If a man is despondent about his work, the best 
remedy that I can prescribe to him is to turn to a good biogra- 
phy ; there he will find that other men before him have known 
the dreary reaction that follows long-sustained effort, and he 
will find that one of the differences between the first-rate man 
and the fifth-rate lies in the vigor with which the first-rate man 
recovers from this reaction, and crushes it down, and again flings 
himself once more upon the breach. I remember the wisest and 
most virtuous man I have ever known, or am ever likely to know, 
— Mr. Mill, — once saying to me that whenever he had written 
any thing, he always felt profoundly dissatisfied with it, and it 
was only by reflecting that he had felt the same about other 
pieces of which the world had thought well, that he could bring 
himself to send the new production to the printer. The heroism 
of the scholar and the truth-seeker is not less admirable than 
the heroism of the man-at-arms. 

Finally, you none of you need to be reminded of the most 
central and important of all the commonplaces of the student — 
that the stuff of which life is made is Time ; that it is better, as 
Goethe said, to do the most trifling thing in the world, than to 
think half an hour a trifling thing. Nobody means by this that 
we are to have no pleasures. Where time is lost and wasted is 
where many people lose and waste their money — in things 
that are neither pleasure nor business — in those random and 
officious sociabilities, which neither refresh nor instruct nor 
invigorate, but only fret and benumb and wear all edge off the 
mind. All these things, however, you have all of you often 
thought about ; yet, alas, we are so ready to forget, both in these 
matters and in other and weightier, how irrevocable are our 
mistakes. 



142 JOHN MO R LEY. 

" The moving Finger writes, and having v^'rit, 
Moves on ; nor all your piety nor wit 
Can lure it back to cancel half a line, 
Nor all your tears wipe out a word of it." 

And now I think I cannot ask you to listen any longer, I 
will only add that these ceremonial anniversaries, when they are 
over, sometimes slightly tend to depress us, unless we are on 
our guard. When the prizes of the year are all distributed, 
and the address is at an end, we perhaps ask ourselves. Well, 
and what then ? It is not to be denied that the expectations 
of the first fervent promoters of popular instruction by such 
institutes as this — of men like Lord Brougham and others, a 
generation ago — were not fulfilled. The principal reason was 
that the elementary instruction of the country was not then 
sufficiently advanced to supply a population ready to take 
advantage of education in the higher subjects. WeW, we are in 
a fair way for removing that obstacle. It is true that the old 
world moves tardily on its arduous way, but even if the results 
of all our efiforts in the cause of education were smaller than 
they are, there are still two considerations that ought to weigh 
with us and encourage us. 

For one thing, you' never know what child in rags and pitiful 
squalor that meets you in the street may have in him the germ 
of gifts that might add new treasures to the store-house of beau- 
tiful things or noble acts. In that great storm of terror that 
swept over France in 1793, a certain man who was every hour 
expecting to be led off to the guillotine, uttered this memorable 
sentiment : " Even at this incomprehensible moment," he said 
"w'hen mortality, enlightenment, love of country, — all of them 



av POPULAR CULTURE. 1 43 

only make death at the prison-door or on the scaffold more 
certain — yes, on the fatal tumbril itself, with nothing free but 
my voice, I could still cry Take care., to a child that should 
come too near the wheel ; perhaps I may save his life, perhaps 
he may one day save his country." This is a generous and 
inspiring thought — one to which the roughest-handed man or 
woman in Birmingham may respond as honestly and heartily as 
the philosopher who wrote it. It ought to shame the listlessness 
with which so many of us see the great phantasmagoria of life 
pass before us. 

There is another thought to encourage us, still more direct, 
and still more positive. The boisterous old notion of hero- 
worship, which has been preached by so eloquent a voice in our 
age, is, after all, now seen to be a half-truth, and to contain the 
less edifying and the less profitable half of the truth. The 
world will never be able to spare its hero, and the man with the 
rare and inexplicable gift of genius will always be as command- 
ing a figure as he has ever been. What we see every day with 
increasing clearness is that not only the well-being of the many, 
but the chances of exceptional genius, moral or intellectual, in 
the gifted few, are highest in a society where the average interest, 
curiosity, capacity, are all highest. The moral of this for you 
and for me is plain. We cannot, like Beethoven or Handel, lift 
the soul by the magic of divine melody into the seventh heaven 
of ineffable vision and hope incommensurable ; we cannot, like 
Newton, weigh the far-off stars in a balance, and measure the 
heavings of the eternal flood ; \\q cannot, like Voltaire, scorch 
up what is cruel and false by a word as a flame ; nor, like 
Milton or Burke, awaken men's hearts with the note of an 



144 JOHN MO R LEY. 

organ-trumpet ; we cannot, like the great saints of the churches 
and the great sages of the schools, add to those acquisitions of 
spiritual beauty and intellectual mastery which have, one by 
one, and little by little, raised man from being no higher than the 
brute to be only a little lower than the angels. But what we 
can do — the humblest of us in this great hall — is by diligently 
using our own minds and diligently seeking to extend our own 
opportunities to others, to help to swell that common tide, on 
the force and the set of whose currents depends the prosperous 
voyaging of humanity. When our names are blotted out, and 
our place knows us no more, the energy of each social service 
will remain, and so too, let us not forget, will each social disser- 
vice remain, like the unending stream of one of nature's 
forces. The thought that this is so, may well lighten the poor 
perplexities of our daily life, and even soothe the pang of its 
calamities ; it lifts us from our feet as on wings, opening a larger 
meaning to our private toil and a higher purpose to our public 
endeavor ; it makes the morning as we awake to its welcome, 
and the evening like a soft garment as it wraps us about ; it 
nerves our arm with boldness against oppression and injustice, 
and strengthens our voice with deeper accents against falsehood, 
while we are yet in the full noon of our days — yes, and perhaps 
it will shed some ray of consolation, when our eyes are growing 
dim to Jt all, and we go down into the Valley of Darkness. 



ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN 
FOREIGNERS.* 



BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
(Born 1819.) 




ALKING one day toward the Village, as we used to 
call it in the good old days when almost every dweller 
in the town had been born in it, I was enjoying that 
delicious sense of disenthralment from the actual 
which the deepening twilight brings with it, giving as it does a 
sort of obscure novelty to things familiar. The coolness, the 
hush, broken only by the distant bleat of some belated goat, 
querulous to be disburthened of her milky load, the few faint 
stars, more guessed as yet than seen, the sense that the 
coming dark would so soon fold me in the secure privacy of its 
disguise, — all things combined in a result as near absolute 
peace as can be hoped for by a man who knows that there is a 
writ out against him in the hands of the printer's devil. For 
the moment, I was enjoying the blessed privilege of thinking 
without being called on to stand and deliver what I thought 

* From " My Study Windows," through the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, 
Mifflin, & Co. 

MS 



146 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

to the small public who are good enough to take any interest 
therein. I love old ways, and the path I was walking felt 
kindly to the feet it had known for almost fifty years. How 
many fleeting impressions it had shared with me ! How many 
times I had lingered to study the shadows of the leaves mezzo- 
tinted upon the turf that edged it by the moon, of the bare 
boughs etched with a touch beyond Rembrandt by the same 
unconscious artist on the smooth page of snow ! If I turned 
round, through dusky tree-gaps came the first twinkle of evening 
lamps in the dear old homestead. On Corey's hill I could see 
these tiny pharoses of love and home and sweet domestic 
thoughts flash out one by one across the blackening salt- 
meadow between. How much has not kerosene added to the 
cheerfulness of our evening landscape ! A pair of night-herons 
flapped heavily over me toward the hidden river. The war was 
ended. I might walk townward without that aching dread of 
bulletins that had darkened the July sunshine and twice made 
the scarlet leaves of October seem stained with blood. I 
remembered with a pang, half proud, half painful, how, so 
many years ago, I had walked over the same i^ath and felt 
round my finger the soft pressure of a little hand that was one 
day to harden with faithful grip of sabre. On how many paths, 
leading to how many homes where proud Memory does all she 
can tQ fill up the fireside gaps with shining shapes, must not 
men be walking in just such pensive mood as I .-• Ah, young 
heroes, safe in immortal youth as those of Homer, you at least 
carried your ideal hence untarnished ! It is locked for you 
beyond moth or rust in the treasure-chamber of Death. 

Is not a country, I thought, that has had such as they in it. 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 147 

that could give such as they a brave joy in dying for it, worth 
something then ? And as I felt more and more the soothing 
magic of evening's cool palm upon my temples, as my fancy came 
home from its revery, and my senses, witli reawakened curi- 
osity, ran to the front windows again from the viewless closet 
of abstraction, and felt a strange charm in finding the old tree 
and shabby fence still there under the travesty of falling night, 
nay, were conscious of an unsuspected newn9ss in familiar stars 
and the fading outlines of hills my earliest horizon, I was 
conscious of an immortal soul, and could not but rejoice in the 
unwaning goodliness of the world into which I had been born 
without any merit of my own. I thought of dear Henry 
Vaughan's rainbow, " Still young and fine ! " I remembered 
l^eople who had to go over to the Alps to learn what the divine 
silence of snow was, who must run to Italy before they were 
conscious of the miracle wrought every day under their very 
noses by the sunset, who must call upon the Berkshire hills to 
teach them what a painter autumn was, while 'close at hand the 
Fresh Pond meadows made all oriels cheap with hues that 
showed' as if a sunset-cloud had been wrecked among their 
maples. One might be worse off than even in America, I 
thought. There are some things so elastic that even the heavy 
roller of democracy cannot flatten them altogether down. The 
mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts and 
dwell a hermit anj^where. A country without traditions, witiiout 
ennobling associations, a scramble of parvenus.^ with a horrible 
consciousness of shoddy running through politics, manners, art, 
literature, nay, religion itself? I confess, it did not seem to me 
there in that illimitable quiet, that serene self-possession of 



148 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

nature, where Collins might have brooded his " Ode to Even- 
ing," or where those verses on Solitude in Dodsley's Collection, 
that Hawthorne liked so much, might have been composed. 
Traditions? Granting that we had none, all that is worth 
having in them is the common property cf the soul, — an estate 
in gavelkind for all the sons of Adam, — and, moreover, if a 
man cannot stand on his two feet (the prime quality of whoever 
has left any tradition behind him), were it not better for him to 
be honest about it at once, and go down on all fours ? And for 
associations, if one have not the wit to make them for himself 
out of his native earth, no ready-made ones of other men will 
avail him much. Lexington is none the worse to me for not 
being in Greece, nor Gettysburg that its name is not Marathon. 
" Blessed old fields," I was just exclaiming to myself, like one 
of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes, "dear acres, innocently secure from 
history, which these eyes first beheld, may you be also those to 
which they shall at last slowly darken ! " when I was interrupted 
by a voice which asked me in German whether I was the Herr 
Professor, Doctor So-and-so ? The " Doctor " was my brevet of 
vaticination, to make the grade easier to my pocket. 

One feels so intimately assured that he is made up, in part, of 
shreds and Jeavings of the past, in part of the interpolations of 
other peiople, that an honest man would be slow in saying yes 
to suCh a question. But " my name is So-and-so " is a safe 
answer, and I gave it. While I had been romancing with 
myself, the street-lamps had been lighted, and it was under one 
of these detectives that have robbed the Old Road of its privi- 
lege of sanctuary after nightfall that I was ambushed by my foe. 
The inexorable villain had taken my description, it appears, that 



CO.VDESC£A'S/0/V IN FOREIGNERS. 1 49 

I might have the less chance to escape him. Dr. Hohnes tells us 
that we change our substance, not every seven years, as was 
once believed, but with every breath we draw. Why had I not 
the wit to avail myself of the subterfuge, and, like Peter, to 
renounce my identity, especially, as in certain moods of mind, I 
have often mOre than doubted of it myself? When a man is, as 
it were, his own front door, and is thus knocked at, why may he 
not assume the right of that sacred wood to make every house a 
castle, by denying himself to all visitations ? I was truly not at 
home when the question was put to me, but had to recall myself 
from all out-of-doors, and to piece my self-consciousness hastily- 
together as well as I could before I answered it. 

I knew perfectly well what was coming. It is seldom that 
debtors or good Samaritans waylay people under gas-lamps in 
order to force money upon them, so far as I have seen or heard. 
I was also aware, from considerable experience, that every for- 
eigner is persuaded, that by doing this country the favor of 
coming to it, he has laid every native thereof under an obliga- 
tion, pecuniary or other, as the case may be, whose discharge he 
is entitled to on demand duly made in person or by letter. Too 
much learning (of this kind) has made me mad in the provincial 
sense of the word. I had begun life with the theory of giving 
something to every beggar that came along, though sure of 
never finding a native-born countryman among them. In a 
small way I was resolved to emulate Hatem Tai's tent, with its 
three hundred and sixty-five entrances, one for every day in the 
year, — I know not whether he was astronomer enough to add 
another for leap-years. The beggars were a kind of German- 
silver aristocracy ; not real plate, to be sure, but better than 



ISO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

nothing. Where everybody was over-worked, they supplied the 
comfortable equipoise of absolute leisure, so aesthetically need- 
ful. Besides, I was but too conscious of a vagrant fibre in 
myself, which too often thrilled me in my solitary walks with the 
temptation to wander on into infinite space, and by a single 
spasm of resolution to emancipate myself from the drudgery of 
prosaic serfdom to respectability and the regular course of 
things. This prompting has been at times my familiar demon, 
and I could not but feel a kind of respectful sympathy for men 
who had dared what I had only sketched out to myself as a 
splendid possibility. For seven years I helped maintain one 
heroic man on an imaginary journey to Portland,^ — as fine an 
example as I have ever known of hopeless loyalty to an ideal. 
I assisted another so long in a fruitless attempt to reach Meck- 
lenburg-Schwerin, that at last we grinned in each other's faces 
when we met, like a couple of augurs. He was possessed by 
this harmless mania as some are by the North Pole, and I shall 
never forget his look of regretful compassion (as for one who 
was sacrificing his higher life to the fleshpots of Egypt) when I 

at last advised him somewhat strenuously to go to the D , 

whither the road was so much travelled that he could not miss 
it. General Banks, in his noble zeal for the honor of his coun- 
try, would confer on the Secretary of State the power of impris- 
oning; in case of war, all these seekers of the unattainable, thus 
by a stroke of the pen annihilating the single poetic element in 
our humdrum life. Alas ! not everybody has the genius to be a 
Bobbin-Boy, or, doubtless, all these also would have chosen that 
more prosperous line of life ! But moralists, sociologists, polit- 
ical economists, and taxes have slowly convinced me that my 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 151 

beggarly sympathies were a sin against society. Especially was 
the Buckle doctrine of averages (so flattering to our free-will) 
persuasive with me ; for as there must be in every year a certain 
number who would bestow an alms on these abridged editions 
of the Wandering Jew, the withdrawal of my quota could make 
no possible difference, since some destined proxy must always 
step forward to fill my gap. Just so many misdirected letters 
every year and no more I Would it were as easy to reckon up 
the number of men on whose backs fate has written the wrong 
address, so that they arrive by mistake in Congress and other 
places where they do not belong ! May not these wanderers of 
whom I speak have been sent into the world without any proper 
address at all ? Where is our Dead-Letter Otfice for such ? 
And if wiser social arrangements should furnish us with some- 
thing of the sort, fancy (horrible thought !) how many a working 
man's friend (a kind of industry in which the labor is light and 
the wages heavy) would be sent thither because not called for in 
the office where he at present lies. 

But I am leaving my new acquaintance too long under the 
lamp-post. The same Gano which had betrayed me to him 
revealed to me a well-set young man of about half my own age, 
as well dressed, so far as I could see, as I was, and with every 
natural qualification for getting his own livelihood as good, if not 
better, than my own. He had been reduced to the painful 
necessity of calling upon me by a series of crosses beginning 
with the Baden Revolution (for which, I own, he seemed rather 
young, — but perhaps he referred to a kind of revolution prac- 
tised every season at Baden-Baden), continued by repeated 
failures in business, for amounts which must convince me of his 



152 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

entire respectability, and ending with our Civil War. During 
the latter, he had served with distinction as a soldier, taking a 
main part in every important battle, with a rapid list of which he 
favored me, and no doubt would have admitted that, impartial 
as Jonathan Wild's great ancestor, he had been on both sides, 
had I baited him with a few hints of conservative opinions on a 
subject so distressing to a gentleman wishing to profit by one's 
sympathy and unhappily doubtful as to which way it might lean. 
For all these reasons, and, as he seemed to imply, for his merit 
in consenting to be born in Germany, he considered himself my 
natural creditor 'to the extent of five dollars, which he would 
handsomely consent to accept in greenbacks, though he pre- 
ferred specie. The offer was certainly a generous one, and the 
claim presented with an assurance that carried conviction. But, 
unhappily, I had been led to remark a curious natural phenom- 
enon. If I was ever weak enough to give any thing to a 
petitioner of whatever nationality, it always rained decayed 
compatriots of his for a month after. Post hoc ergo propter hoc 
may not be always safe logic, but here I seemed to perceive a 
natural connection of cause and effect. Now, a few days be- 
fore I had been so tickled with a paper (professedly written by 
a benevolent American clergyman) certifying that the bearer, a 
hard-working German, had long " sofered with rheumatic paints 
in his limps," that, after copying the passage into my note-book, 
I thought it but fair to pay a trifling hofiorarium to the author. 
I had pulled the string of the shower-bath ! It had been run- 
ning shipwrecked sailors for some time, but forthwith it began 
to pour Teutons, redolent of lager-bier. I could not help asso- 
ciating the apparition of my new friend with this series of other- 



COiVDESCEA'SION IN FOREIGNERS. 1 53 

wise unaccountable phenomena. I accordingly made up my 
mind to deny the debt, and modestly did so, pleading a native 
bias toward impecuniosity to the full as strong as his own. He 
took a high tone with me at once, such as an honest man would 
naturally take with a confessed repudiator. He even brought 
down' his proud stomach so far as to join himself to me for the 
rest of my townward walk, that he might give me his views of 
the American people, and thus inclusively of myself. 

I know not whether it is because I am pigeon-livered and lack 
gall, or whether it is from an overmastering sense of drollery, 
but I am apt to submit to such bastings with a patience which 
afterward surprises me, being not without my share of warmth 
in the blood. Perhaps it is because I so often meet with young 
persons who know vastly more than I do, and especially with so 
many foreigners whose knowledge of this country is superior to 
my own. However it may be, I listened for some time with 
tolerable composure as my self-appointed lecturer gave me in 
detail his opinions of my country and its people. America, he 
informed me, was without arts, science, literature, culture, or any 
native hope of supplying them. We were a people wholly given 
to money-getting, and who, having got it, knew no other use for 
it than to hold it fast. I am fain to confess that I felt a sensible 
itching of the biceps, and that my fingers closed with such a 
grip as he had just informed me was one of the effects of our 
unhappy climate. But happening just then to be where I could 
avoid temptation by dodging down a by-street, I hastily left him 
to finish his diatribe to the lamp-post, which could stand it better 
than I. That young man will never know how near he came to 
being assaulted by a respectable gentleman of middle age, at 



154 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

the corner of Church Street. I have never felt quite satisfied 
that I did all my duty by him in not knocking him down. But 
perhaps he might have knocked me down, and then ? 

The capacity of indignation makes an essential part of the 
outfit of every honest man, but I am inclined to doubt whether 
he is a wise one who allows himself to act upon its first hints. 
It should be rather, I suspect, a latent heat in the blood, which 
makes itself felt in character, a steady reserve for the brain, 
warming the ovum of thought to life, rather than cooking it by 
a too hasty enthusiasm in reaching the boiling-point. As my 
pulse gradually fell back to its normal beat, I reflected that I 
had been uncomfortably near making a fool of myself, — a 
handy salve of euphuism for our vanity, though it does not 
always make a just allowance to Nature for her share in the 
business. What possible claim had my Teutonic friend to rob 
me of my composure ? I am not, I think, especially thin-skinned 
as to other people's opinions of myself, having, as I conceive, 
later and fuller intelligence on that point than anybody else can 
give. Life is continually weighing us in very sensitive scales, 
and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to 
the last grain of dust. Whoever at fifty does not rate himself 
quite as low as most of his acquaintance would be likely to put 
him, must be either a fool or a great man, and I humbly disclaim 
being' either. But if I was not smarting in person from any 
scattering shot of my late companion's commination, why should 
I grow hot at any implication of my country therein ? Surely 
her shoulders are broad enough if yours or mine are not, to bear 
up under a considerable avalanche of this kind. It is the bit of 
truth in every slander, the hint of likeness in every caricature, 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 1 55 

that makes us smart. " Art thou therc^ old Truepenny ? " How 
did your blade know its way so well to that one loose rivet in our 
armor ? I wondered whether Americans were over-sensitive in 
this respect, whether they were more touchy than other folks. 
On the whole, I thought we were not. Plutarch, who at least 
had studied philosophy, if he had not mastered Ht, could not 
stomach something Herodotus had said of Bceotia, and devoted 
an essay to showing up the delightful old traveller's malice and 
ill-breeding. French editors leave out of Montaigne's " Travels " 
some remarks of his about France, for reasons best known to 
themselves. Pachydermatous Deutschland, covered with tro- 
phies from every field of letters, still winces under that question 
which Pere Bouhours put two centuries ago. Si un Allemand 
pent etre M-csprit? John Bull grew apoplectic with angry 
amazement at the audacious persiflage of Piickler-Muskau. To 
be sure he was a prince, — but that was not all of it, for a 
chance phrase of gentle Hawthorne sent a spasm through all 
the journals of England. Then this tenderness is not peculiar 
to us ? Console yourself, dear man and brother, whatever you 
may be sure of, be sure at least of this, that you are dreadfully 
like other people. Human nature has a much greater genius 
for sameness than for originality, or the world would be at a sad 
pass shortly. The surprising thing is, that men have such a 
taste for this somewhat musty flavor, that an Englishman, for 
example, should feel himself defrauded, nay, even outraged, 
when he comes over here and finds a people speaking what he 
admits to be something like English, and yet so very different 
from (or, as he would say, to) those he left at home. Nothing, 
I am sure, equals my thankfulness when I meet an Englishman 



156 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

who is not like every other or, I may add, an American of the 
same odd turn. 

Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as nice 
about his country as about his sweetheart ; and who ever heard 
even the friendliest appreciation of that unexpressive she that 
did not seem to fall infinitely short ? Yet it would hardly be 
wise to hold every one an enemy who could not see her with our 
own enchanted eyes. It seems to be the common opinion of 
foreigners that Americans are too tender upon this point. Per- 
haps we are ; and if so, there must be a reason for it. Have we 
had fair-play .? Could the eyes of what is called Good Society 
(though it is so seldom true either to the adjective or noun) look 
upon a nation of democrats with any chance of receiving an 
undistorted image ? Were not those, moreover, who found in 
the old order of things an earthly paradise, paying them quar- 
terly dividends for the wisdom of their ancestors, with the 
punctuality of the seasons, unconsciously bribed to misunder- 
stand if not to misrepresent, us? Whether at war or at peace, 
there we were, a standing menace to all earthly joaradises of 
that kind, fatal underminers of the very credit on which the 
dividends were based, all the more hateful and terrible that our 
destructive agency was so insidious, working invisible in the 
elements, as it seemed, active while they slept, and coming upon 
them in the darkness like an armed man. Could Laius have 
the proper feelings of a father toward Qidipus, announced as 
his destined destroyer by infallible oracles, and felt to be such 
by every conscious fibre of his soul ? For more than a century 
the Dutch were the laughing-stock of polite Europe. They 
were butter-firkins, swillers of beer and schnaps, and tiieir 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 1 57 

vroiiws from whom Holbein painted the ail-but loveliest of 
Madonnas, Rembrandt the graceful girl who sits immortal on his 
knee in Dresden, and Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the 
synonymes of clumsy vulgarity. Even so late as Irving, the 
ships of the greatest navigators in the world were represented 
as sailing equally well stern-foremost. That the aristocratic 
Venetians should have 

"Riveted with gigantic piles 
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles," 

was heroic. But the far more marvellous achievement of the 
Dutch in the same kind was ludicrous even to republican 
Marvell. Meanwhile, during that very century of scorn, they 
were the best artists, sailors, merchants, bankers, printers, 
scholars, jurisconsults, and statesmen in Europe, and the genius 
of Motley has revealed them to us, earning a right to themselves 
by the most heroic struggle in human annals. But, alas ! they 
were not merely simple burghers w^ho had fairly made them- 
selves High Mightinesses, and could treat on equal terms with 
anointed kings, but their commonwealth carried in its bosom the • 
germs of democracy. They even unmuzzled, at least after 
dark, that dreadful mastiff, the Press, whose scent is, or ought to 
be, so keen for wolves in sheep's clothing and for certain other 
animals in lions' skins. They made fun of Sacred Majesty, and, 
what was worse, managed uncommonly well without it. In an 
age when periwigs made so large a part of the natural dignity 
of man, people with such a turn of mind were dangerous. How 
could they seem other than vulgar and hateful ? 

In the natural course of things we succeeded to this unenvia- » 
ble position of general butt. The Dutch had thriven under it 



158 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

pretty well, and there was hope that we could at least contrive to 
worry along. And we certainly did in a very redoubtable fashion. 
Perhaps we deserved some of the sarcasm more than our Dutch 
predecessors in office. We had nothing to boast of in arts or 
letters, and were given to bragging overmuch of our merely 
material prosperity, due quite as much to the virtue of our conti- 
nent as to our own. There was some truth in Carlyle's sneer, 
after all. Till we had succeeded in some higher way than this, 
we had only the success of physical growth. Our greatness, 
like that of enormous Russia, was greatness on the map, — 
barbarian mass only; but had we gone down, like that other 
Atlantis, in some vast cataclysm, we should have covered but a 
jDin's point on the chart of memory, compared with those ideal 
spaces occupied by tiny Attica and cramped England. At the 
same time, our critics somewhat too easily forgot that material 
must make ready the foundation for ideal triumphs, that the arts 
have no chance in poor countries. But it must be allowed that 
democracy stood for a great deal in our shortcoming. The 
Edinburgh Rcvieiv never would have thought of asking, " Who 
reads a Russian book ? " and England was satisfied with iron 
from Sweden without being impertinently inquisitive after her 
painters and statuaries. Was it that they expected too much 
from the mere miracle of Freedom ? Is it not the highest art 
of a Republic to make men of flesh and blood, and not the 
marble ideals of such. It may be fairly doubted whether we 
have produced this higher type of man yet. Perhaps it is the 
collective, not the individual, humanity that is to have a 
chance of nobler development among us. We shall see. We 
have a vast amount of imported ignorance, and, still worse, of 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



159 



native ready-made knowledge, to digest before even the prelimi- 
naries of such a consummation can be arranged. We have got 
to learn that statesmanship is the most complicated of all arts, 
and to come back to the apprenticeship system too hastily 
abandoned. At present, we trust a man with making constitutions 
on less proof of competence than we should demand before we 
gave him our shoe to patch. We have nearly reached the limit of 
the reaction from the old notion which paid too much regard to 
birth and station as qualifications for office, and have touched 
the extreme point in the opposite direction, putting the highest 
of human functions up at auction to be bid for by any creature 
capable of going upright on two legs. In some places, we have 
arrived at a point at which civil society is no longer possible, 
and already another reaction has begun, not backward to the old 
system, but toward fitness either from natural aptitude or special 
training. But will it always be safe to let evils work their own 
cure by becoming unendurable ? Every one of them leaves its 
taint in the constitution of the body-politic, each in itself, 
perhaps, trifling, yet altogether powerful for evil. 

But whatever we might do or leave undone, we were not gen- 
teel, and it was uncomfortable to be continually reminded that, 
though we should boast that we were the Great West till we 
were black in the face, it did not bring us an inch nearer to the 
world's West End. That sacred enclosure of respectability was 
tabooed to us. The Holy Alliance did not inscribe us on its 
visiting-list. The Old World of wigs and orders and liveries 
would shop with us, but we must ring at the area-bell, and not 
venture to awaken the more august clamors of the knocker. 
Our manners, it must be granted, had none of those graces that 



l6o JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. ■ 

Stamp the caste of Vere de. Vere, in whatever museum of British 
antiquities they may be hidden. In short, we were vulgar. 

This was one of those horribly vague accusations, the victim 
of which has no defence. An umbrella is of no avail against a 
Scotch mist. It envelops you, it penetrates at every pore, it 
wets you through without seeming to wet you at all. Vulgarity 
is an eighth deadly sin, added to the list in these latter days, and 
worse than all the others put together, since it perils your salva- 
tion in //^/i- world, — far the more important of the two in the 
minds of most men. It profits nothing to draw nice distinctions 
between essential and conventional, for the convention in this 
case is the essence, and you may break every command of the 
decalogue with perfect 'good-breeding, nay, if you are adroit, 
without losing caste. We, indeed, had it not to lose, for we had 
never gained it. " Il(?7a am I vulgar ? " asks the culprit, shud- 
deringly. " Because thou art not like unto Us," answers Lucifer, 
Son of the Morning, and there is no more to be said. The god 
of this world may be a fallen angel, but he has us there ! We 
were as clean — so far as my observation goes, I think we were 
cleaner — morally and physically, than the English, and there- 
fore, of course, than everybody else. But we did not pronounce 
the diphthong ou as they did, and we said eether and not eyt/ier, 
following therein the fashion of our ancestors, who unhappily 
could -bring over no English better than Shakespeare's ; and we 
did not stammer as they had learned to do from the courtiers, 
who in this way flattered the Hanoverian king, a foreigner 
among the people he had come to reign over. Worse than all, 
we might have the noblest ideas and the finest sentiments in 
the world, but we vented them through that organ by which men 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNEI^S. l6l 

are led rather than leaders, though some physiologists would 
persuade us that Nature furnishes her captains with a fine 
handle to their faces that Opportunity may get a good purchase 
on them for dragging them to the front. 

This state of things was so painful that excellent people were 
not wanting who gave their whole genius to reproducing here 
the original Bull, whether by gaiters, the cut of their whiskers, 
by a factitious brutality in their tone, or by an accent that was 
forever tripping and falling flat over the tangled roots of our 
common tongue. Martyrs to a false ideal, it never occurred to 
them that nothing is more hateful to gods and men than a 
second-rate Englishman, and for the very reason that this planet 
never produced a more splendid creature than the first-rate one, 
witness Shakespeare and the Indian Mutiny. Witness that 
truly sublime self-abnegation of those prisoners lately among 
the bandits of Greece, where average men gave an example of 
quiet fortitude for which all the stoicism of antiquity can show 
no match. If we could contrive to be not too unobtrusively 
our simple selves, -we should be the most delightful of human 
beings, and the most original ; whereas, when the plating of 
Anglicism rubs off, as it always will in points that come to much 
wear, we are liable to very unpleasing conjectures about the 
quality of the metal uHderneath. Perhaps one reason why the 
average Briton spreads himself here with such an easy air of 
superiority, may be owing to the fact that he meets with so many 
bad imitations as to conclude himself the only real thing in a 
wilderness of shams. He fancies himself moving through an 
endless Bloomsbury, where his mere apparition confers honor as 
an avatar of the court-end of the universe. Not a Bull of them 



1 62 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

all but is persuaded he bears Europa upon his back. This is 
the sort of fellow whose patronage is so divertingly insufferable. 
Thank Heaven he is not the only specimen of cater-cousinship 
from the dear old Mother Island that is shown to us 1 Among 
genuine things. I know nothing more genuine than the better 
men whose limbs were made in England. So manly-tender, so 
brave, so true, so warranted to wear, they make us proud to feel 
that blood is thicker than water. 

But it is not merely the Englishman ; every European can- 
didly admits in himself some right of primogeniture in respect 
to us, and pats this shaggy continent on the back with a lively 
sense of generous unbending. The German who plays the bass- 
viol has a well-founded contempt, which he is not always nice in 
concealing, for a country so few of whose children ever take 
that noble instrument between their knees. His cousin, the 
Ph. D. from Gottingen, cannot help despising a people who do 
not grow loud and red over Aryans and Turanians, and are 
indifferent about their descent from either. The Frenchman 
feels an easy mastery in speaking his mother-tongue, and attrib- 
utes it to some native superiority of parts that lifts him high 
above us barbarians of the West. The Italian prima doima 
sweeps a courtesy of careless pity to the over-facile pit which 
unsexes her with the bravo ! innocently meant to show a famili- 
arity with foreign usage. But all without exception make no 
secret of regarding us as the goose bound to deliver them a 
golden egg in return for their cackle. Such men as Agassiz, 
Guyot, and Goldwin Smith come with gifts in their hands ; but 
since it is commonly European failures who bring hither their 
remarkable gifts and acquirements, this view of the case is some- 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 1 63 

times just the least bit in the world provoking. To think what 
a delicious seclusion of contempt we enjoyed till California and 
our own ostentatious parvenus, flinging gold away in Europe 
that might have endowed libraries at home, gave us the ill- 
repute of riches ! What a shabby downfall from the Arcadia 
which the French ofificers of our Revolutionary War fancied they 
saw here through Rousseau-tinted spectacles ! Something of 
Arcadia there really was, something of the Old Age ; and that 
divine provincialism were cheaply repurchased could we have it 

back again in exchange for the tawdry upholstery that has 

« 
taken its place. 

For some reason or other, the European has rarely been able 
to see America except in caricature. Would the first review of 
the world have printed the niaiseries of Mr. Maurice Sand as a 
picture of society in any civilized country 1 Mr. Sand, to be 
sure, has inherited nothing of his famous mother's literary 
outfit, except the pseudonym. But siqce the conductors of the 
Revue could not have published his story because it was clever, 
they must have thought it valuable for its truth. As true as the 
last-century Englishman's picture of Jean Crapaud ? We do 
not ask to be sprinkled with rose-water, but may perhaps 
fairly protest against being drenched with the rinsings of an 
unclean imagination. The next time the Revue allows such ill- 
bred persons to throw their slops out of its first-floor windows, 
let it honestly preface the discharge with a gare deleaii! that 
we may run from under in season. And Mr. Duvergier 
d'Hauranne, who knows how to be entertaining ! I know le 
Frangais est plutbt indiscret que confiant, and the pen slides too 
easily when indiscretions will fetch so much a page; but should 



1 64 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

we not have been tant-soit-peii more cautious had we been 
writing about people on the other side of the Channel? But 
then it is a fact in the natural history of the American long 
familiar to Europeans, that he abhors privacy, knows not the 
meaning of reserve, lives in hotels because of their greater pub- 
licity, and is never so pleased as when his domestic affairs (if he 
may be said to have any), are paraded in the newspapers. 
Barnum, it is well known, represents perfectly the average 
national sentiment in this respect. However it be, we are not 
treated like other people, or perhaps I should say like people 
who are ever likely to be met with in society. 

Is it in the climate ? Either I have a false notion of Euro- 
pean manners, or else the atmosphere affects them strangely 
when exported hither. Perhaps they suffer from the sea-voyage 
like some of the more delicate wines. During our Civil War an 
Englishman of the highest description was kind enough to call 
upon me, mainly, as it seemed, to inform me how entirely he 
sympathized with the Confederates, and how sure he felt that 
we could never subdue them, — " they were the gentlemen of the 
country, you know." Another, the first greetings hardly over, 
asked me how I accounted for the universal meagreness of my 
countrymen. To a thinner man than I, or from a stouter man 
than he, the question might have been offensive. The Marquis 
of Hartington ^ wore a secession badge at a public ball in New 

1 One of Mr. Lincoln's neatest strokes of humor was his treatment of this gentle- 
man when a laudable curiosity induced him to be presented to the President of the 
Broken Bubble. Mr. Lincoln persisted in calling him Mr. Partington. Surely the 
refinement of good-breeding could go no farther. Giving the young man his real name 
(already notorious in the newspapers) would have made his visit an insult. Had 
Henri IV done this, it would have been famous. 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 1 65 

York. In a civilized country he might liave been roughly 
handled ; but here, where the bienseanccs are not so well under- 
stood, of course nobody minded it. A French traveller told me 
he had been a good deal in the British colonies, and had been 
astonished to see how soon the people became Americanized. 
He added, with delightful bonhomie, and as if he were sure it 
would charm me, that " they even began to talk through their 
noses, just like you ! " I was naturally ravished with this testi- 
mony to the assimilating power of democracy, and could only 
reply that I hoped they would never adopt our democratic 
patent-method of seeming to settle one's honest debts, for they 
would find it pa}'ing through the nose in the long-run. I am a 
man of the New World, and do not know precisely the present 
fashion of Mayfair, but I have a kind of feeling that if an 
American {mutato nomine, de tc is always frightfully possible) 
were to do this kind of thing under a European roof, it would 
induce some disagreeable reflections as to the ethical results of 
democracy. I read the other day in print the remark of a 
British tourist who had eaten large quantities of our salt, such 
as it is (I grant it has not the Euroi^ean savor), that the 
Americans were hospitable, no doubt, but that it was partly 
because they longed for foreign visitors to relieve the tedium of 
their dead-level existence, and partly from ostentation. What 
shall we do ? Shall we close our doors ? Not I, for one, if I 
should so have forfeited the friendship of L. S., most lovable of 
men. He somehow seems to find us human, at least, and so 
did Clough, whose poetry will one of these days, perhaps, be 
found to have been the best utterance in verse of this gener- 
ation. And T. H., the mere grasp of whose manly hand carries 



1 66 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

with it the pledge of frankness and friendship, of an abiding 
simpHcity of nature as affecting as it is rare ! 

The fine old Tory aversion of former times was not hard to 
bear. There was something even refreshing in it, as in a north- 
easter to a hardy temperament. When a British parson, travel- 
ling in Newfoundland while the slash of our separation was still 
raw, after prophesying a glorious future for an island that con- 
tinued to dry its fish under the aegis of Saint George, glances 
disdainfully over his spectacles in parting at the U. S. A., and 
forebodes for them a " speedy relapse into barbarism," now that 
they have madly cut themselves off from the humanizing influ- 
ences of Britain, I smile with barbarian self-conceit. But this 
kind of thing became by degrees an unpleasant anachronism. 
For meanwhile the young giant was growing, was beginning 
indeed to feel tight in his clothes, was obliged to let in a gore 
here and there in Texas, in California, in New Mexico, in 
Alaska, and had the scissors and needle and thread ready for 
Canada when the time came. His shadow loomed like a 
Brocken-spectre over against Europe, — the shadow of what 
they were coming to, that was the unpleasant part of it. Even 
in such misty image as they had of him, it was painfully evident 
that his clothes were not of any cut hitherto fashionable, nor 
conceivable by a Bond Street tailor, — and this in an age, too, 
when every thing depends upon clothes, when, if we do not 
keep up appearances, the seeming-solid frame of this universe, 
nay, your very God, would slump into himself, like a mockery 
king of snow, being nothing, after "all, but a prevailing mode. 
From this moment the young giant assumed the respectable 
aspect of a phenomenon, to be got rid of if possible, but at any 



COXDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. iSj 

rate as legitimate a subject of human stu3y as the glacial period, 
or the Silurian what-d'ye-call-ems. If the man of the primeval 
drift-heaps is so absorbingly interesting, why not the man of the 
drift that is just beginning, of the drift into whose irresistible 
current we are just being sucked whether we will or no ? If I 
were in their place, I confess I should not be frightened. Man 
has survived so much, and contrived to be comfortable on this 
planet after surviving so much ! I am something of a protestant 
in matters of government also, and am willing to get rid of vest- 
ments and ceremonies and to come down to bare benches, if 
only faith in God take the place of a general agreement to 
profess confidence in ritual and sham. Every mortal man of us 
holds stock in the only public debt that is absolutely sure of 
payment, and that is the debt of the Maker of this Universe to 
the Universe he has made. I have no notion of selling out my 
stock, in a panic. 

It was something to have advanced even to the dignity of a 
phenomenon, and yet I do not know that the relation of the 
individual American to the individual European was bettered by 
it ; and that, after all, must adjust itself comfortably before 
there can be a right understanding between the two. We had 
been a desert, we became a museum. People came hither for 
scientific, and not social ends. The very cockney could not 
complete his education without taking a vacant stare at us in 
passing. But the sociologists (I think they call themselves so) 
were the hardest to bear. There was no escape. I have even 
known a professor of this fearful science to come disguised in 
petticoats. We were cross-examined as a chemist cross-examines 
a new substance. Human ? Yes, all the elements are present, 



1 68 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

though abnormally co'mbined. Civilized ? Hm ! that needs a 
stricter assay. No entomologist could take a more friendly 
interest in a strange bug. After a few such experiences, I, for 
one, have felt as if I were merely one of those horrid things 
preserved in spirits (and very bad spirits, too) in a cabinet. I 
was not the fellow-being of these explorers : I was a curiosity ; 
I was a specimen. Hath not an American organs, dimensions, 
senses, affections, passions even as a European hath ? If you 
prick us, do we not bleed ? If you tickle us, do we not laugh ? 
I will not keep on with Shylock to his next question but one. 

Till after our Civil War it never seemed to enter the head of 
any foreigner, especially of any Englishman, that an American 
had what could be called a country, except as a place to eat, 
sleep, and trade in. Then it seemed to strike them suddenly. 
" By Jove, you know, fellahs don't fight like that for a shop- 
till ! " No, I rather think not. To Americans America is some- 
thing more than a promise and an expectation. It has a past and 
traditions of its own. A descent from men who sacrificed every 
thing and came hither, not to better their fortunes, but to plant 
their idea in virgin soil, should be a good pedigree. There was 
never colony save this that went forth, not to seek gold, but God. 
Is it not as well to have sprung from such as these as irom some 
burly beggar who came over with Wilhelmus Conquestor, unless, 
indeed,- a line grow better as it runs farther away from stalwart 
ancestors ? And for history, it is dry enough, no doubt, in the 
Jjooks, but, for all that, is of a kind that tells in the blood. I 
have admitted that Carlyle's sneer had a show of truth in it. 
But what does he himself, like a true Scot, admire in the 
Hohenzollerns ? First of all, that they were canny, a thrifty. 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 169 

forehanded race. Next, that they made a good fight from gen- 
eration to generation with the chaos around them. That is 
precis^y the battle which the English race on this continent has 
been carrying doughtily on for two centuries and a half. 
Doughtily and silently, for you cannot hear in Europe " that 
crash, the death-song of the perfect tree," that has been going 
on here from sturdy father to sturdy son, and making this conti- 
nent habitable for the weaker Old World breed that has swarmed 
to it during the last half-century. If ever men did a good stroke 
of work on this planet, it was the forefathers of those whom 
you are wondering whether it would not be prudent to acknowl- 
edge as far-off cousins. Alas, man of genius, to whom we owe 
so much, could you see nothing more than the burning of a foul 
chimney in that clash of Michael and Satan which flamed up 
under your very eyes ? 

Before our war we were to Europe but a huge mob of adven- 
turers and shop-keepers. Leigh Hunt expressed it well enough 
when he said that he could never think of America without see- 
ing a gigantic counter stretched all along the seaboard. Feu- 
dalism had by degrees made commerce, the great civilizer, 
contemptible. But a tradesman with sword on thigh, and very 
prompt of stroke was not only redoubtable, he had become 
respectable also. Few people, I suspect, alluded twice to a 
needle in Sir John Hawkwood's presence, after that doughty 
fighter had exchanged it for a more dangerous tool of the same 
metal. Democracy had been hitherto only a ludicrous effort to 
reverse the laws of nature by thrusting Cleon into the place of 
Pericles. But a democracy that could fight for an abstraction, 
whose members held life and goods cheap compared with that 



170 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

larger life which we call country, was not merely unheard-of, 
but portentous. It was the nightmare of the Old World taking 
upon itself flesh and blood, turning out to be substance and not 
dream. Since the Norman crusader clanged down upon the 
throne of \\\^ porphyro-geiiiti, carefully draped appearances had 
never received such a shock, had never been so rudely called 
on to produce their titles to the empire of the world. Authority 
has had its periods not unlike those of geology, and at last 
comes Man claiming kingship in right of his mere manhood. 
The world of the Saurians might be in some respects more pic- 
turesque, but the march of events is inexorable, and it is by- 
gone. 

The young giant had certainly got out of long-clothes. He 
had become the enfa7it terrible of the human household. It was 
not and will not be easy for the world (especially for our British 
cousins) to look upon us as grown up. The youngest of nations, 
its people must also be young and to be treated accordingly, 
was the syllogism, — as if libraries did not make all nations 
equally old in all those respects, at least, where age is an advan- 
tage and not a defect. Youth, no doubt has its good qualities, 
as people feel who are losing it, but boyishness is another thing. 
We had been somewhat boyish as a nation, a little loud, a little 
pushing, a little braggart. But might it not partly have been 
because we felt that we had certain claims to respect that were 
not admitted ? The war which established our position as a 
vigorous nationality has also sobered us. A nation, like a man, 
cannot look death in the eye for four years, without some 
strange reflections, without arriving at some clearer conscious- 
ness of the stuff it is made of, without some great moral change. 



COXDESCEiVS/O.V IN FOREIGNERS. I /I 

Such a change, or the beginning of it, no observant person can 
fail to see here. Our thought and our politics, our bearing as a 
people, are assuming a manlier tone. We have been compelled 
to see what was weak in democracy as well as what was strong. 
We have begun obscurely to recognize that things do not go of 
themselves, and that popular government is not in itself a 
panacea, is no better than any other form except as the virtue 
and wisdom of the people make it so, and that when men 
undertake to do their own kingship, they enter upon the 
dangers and responsibilities as well as the privileges of the 
function. Above all, it looks as if we were on the way to be 
persuaded that no government can be carried on by declama- 
tion. It is noticeable also that facility of communication has 
made the best English and French thought far more directly 
operative here than ever before. Without being Europeanized, 
our discussion of important questions in statesmanship, in 
political economy, in resthetics, is taking a broader scope and a 
higher tone. It had certainly been provincial, one might 
almost say local, to a very unpleasant extent. Perhaps our 
experience in soldiership has taught us to value training more 
than we have been popularly wont. We may possibly come to 
the conclusion, one of these days, that self-made men may not 
be always equally skilful in the manufacture of wisdom, may not 
be divinely commissioned to fabricate the higher qualities of 
opinion on all possible topics of human interest. 

So long as we continue to be the most common-schooled and 
the least cultivated people in the world, I suppose we must 
consent to endure this condescending manner of foreigners 
toward us. The more friendly they mean to be, the more 



1/2 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

ludicrously prominent it becomes. They can never appreciate 
the immense amount of silent work that has been done here, 
making this continent slowly fit for the abode of man, and 
which will demonstrate itself, let us hope, in the character of the 
people. Outsiders can only be expected to judge a nation by 
the amount it has contributed to the civilization of the world ; 
the amount, that is, that can be seen and handled. A great 
place in history can only be achieved by competitive examina- 
tions, nay, by a long course of them. How much new thought 
have we contributed to the common stock ? Till that question 
can be triumphantly answered, or needs no answer, we must 
continue to be simply interesting as an experiment, to be 
studied as a problem, and not respected as an attained result or 
an accomplished solution. Perhaps, as I have hinted, their pat- 
ronizing manner toward us is the fair result of their failing to 
see here anything more than a poor imitation, a plaster-cast, of 
Europe. And are they not partly right ? If the tone of the 
uncultivated American has too often the arrogance of the 
barbarian, is not that of the cultivated as often vulgarly apolo- 
getic ? In the America they meet with is there the simplicit}^, 
the manliness, the absence of sham, the sincere human nature, 
the sensitiveness to duty and implied obligation, that in any way 
distinguishes us from what our orators call the " effete civiliza- 
tion pf the Old World .'' " Is there a politician among us daring 
enough (except a Dana here and there) to risk his future on the 
chance of our keeping our word with the exactness of supersti- 
tious communities like England .'' Is it certain that we shall be 
ashamed of a bankruptcy of honor, if we can only keep the 
letter of our bond ? I hope we shall be able to answer all these 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 1 73 

questions with a frank yes. At any rate, we would advise our 
visitors that we are not merely curious creatures, but belong to 
the family of man, and that, as individuals, we are not to be 
always subjected to the competitive examination above men- 
tioned, even if we acknowledged their competence as an 
examining board. Above all, we beg them to remember that 
America is no: to us, as to them, a mere object of external 
interest to be discussed and analyzed, but in us, part of our very 
marrow. Let them not suppose that we conceive of ourselves 
as exiles from the graces and amenities of an older date than 
we, though very much at home in a state of things not yet all it 
might be or should be, but which we mean to make ' so, and 
which we find both wholesome and pleasant for men (though 
perhaps not for dilettanti) to live in. " The full tide of human 
existence " may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at 
Charing Cross, and in a larger sense. I know one person who 
is singular enough to think Cambridge the very best spot on the 
habitable globe. "Doubtless God could have made a better, 
but doubtless he never did." 

It will take England a great while to get over her airs of 
patronage toward us, or even passably to conceal them. She 
cannot help confounding the people with the country, and 
regarding us as lusty juveniles. She has a conviction that what- 
ever good there is in us is wholly English, when the truth is that 
we are worth nothing except so far as we have disinfected our- 
selves of Anglicism. She is especially condescending just now, 
and lavishes sugar-plums on us as if we had not outgrown them. 
I am no believer in sudden conversions, especially in sudden 
conversions to a favorable opinion of people who have just 



174 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

proved you to be mistaken in judgment and therefore unwise 
in policy. I never blamed her for not wishing well to democracy, 
— how could she? — but Alabamas are not wishes. Let her 
not be too hasty in believing Mr. Reverdy Johnson's pleasant 
words. Though there is no thoughtful man in America who 
would not consider a war with England the greatest of calamities, 
yet the feeling toward her here is very far from cordial, whatever 
our Minister may say in the effusion that comes after ample 
dining. Mr, Adams, with his famous " My Lord, this means 
war," perfectly represented his country. Justly or not, we have 
a feeling that we have been wronged, not merely insulted. The 
only sure way of bringing about a healthy relation between the 
two countries is for Englishmen to clear their minds of the 
notion that we are always to be treated as a kind of inferior and 
deported Englishman whose nature they perfectly understand, 
and whose back they accordingly stroke the wrong way of the 
fur with amazing perseverance. Let them learn to treat us 
naturally on our merits as human beings, as they w'ould a Ger- 
man or a Frenchman, and not as if we were a kind of counter- 
feit Briton whose crime appeared .in every shade of difference, 
and before long there would come that right feeling which we 
naturally call a good understanding. The common blood, and 
still more the common language, are fatal instruments of misap- 
prehension. Let them give up trying Xo understand us, still more 
thinking that they do, and acting in various absurd ways as the 
necessary consequence, for they will never arrive at that de- 
voutly-to-be-wished consummation, till they learn to look at us 
as we are, and not as they suppose us to be. Dear old long- 
estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many years since we parted. 



CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 1 75 

Since 1660, when you married again, you have been a step- 
mother to us. Put on your spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we 
/iflit/^ grown, and changed likewise. You would not let us darken 
your doors, if you could help it. We know that perfectly well. 
But pray, when we look to be treated as men, don't shake that 
rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to us any longer. 

" Do, child, go to it grandam, child ; 
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig ! " 




ON HISTORY. 

[1830.] 



BY THOMAS CARLVLE. 
(Born 1795, Died 1SS2.) 




LIO was figured by the ancients as the eldest daughter 
of Memory, and chief of the Muses ; which dignity, 
whether we regard the essential qualities of her art, 
or its practice and acceptance among men, we shall 
still find to have been fitly bestowed. History, as it lies at the 
root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's 
spiritual nature ; his earliest expression of what can be called 
Thought. It is a looking both before and after; as, indeed, the 
coming Time already waits, unseen, yet definitely shaped, prede- 
termined, and inevitable, in the Time come ; and only by the 
combination of both is the meaning of either completed. The 
Sibylline Books, though old, are not the oldest. Some nations 
have prophecy, some have not ; but of all mankind, there is no 
tribe so rude that it has not attempted History, though several 
have not arithmetic enough to count Five. History has been 
written with quipo-threads, with feather-pictures, with wampum- 
belts ; still oftener with earth-mounds and monumental stone- 
176 



ON HISTORY. 177 

heaps, whether as pyramid or cairn ; for the Celt and the Copt, 
the Red man as well as the White, lives between two eternities, 
and warring against Oblivion, he would fain unite himself in 
clear conscious relation, as in dim unconscious relation he is 
already united, with the whole Future and the whole Past. 

A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our 
chief inheritance. In a certain sense all men are historians. 
Is not every memory written quite full with Annals, wherein joy 
and mourning, conquest and loss manifoldly alternate ; and, with 
or without philosophy, the whole fortunes of one little inward 
Kingdom, and all its politics, foreign and domestic, stand inef- 
faceably recorded .-' Our very speech is curiously historical. Most 
men, you may observe, speak only to narrate ; not in impart- 
ing what they have thought, which indeed were often a very 
small matter, but in exhibiting what they have undergone or 
seen, which is a quite unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us 
off from Narrative, how would the stream of conversation, even 
among the wisest, languish into detached handfuls, and among 
the foolish utterly evaporate ! Thus, as we do nothing but 
enact History, we say little but recite it : nay, rather, in that 
widest sense, our whole spiritual life is built thereon. For, 
strictly considered, what is all Knowledge too but recorded 
Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, 
Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are 
essential materials ? 

Under a limited, and the only practicable shape. History 
proper, that part of History which treats of remarkable action, 
has, in all modern as well as ancient times, ranked among the 
highest arts, and perhaps never stood higher than in these times 



1/8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

of ours. For whereas, of old, the charm of History lay chiefly 
in gratifying our common appetite for the wonderful, for the un- 
known ; and her office was but as that of a Minstrel and Story- 
teller, she has now further become a Schoolmistress, and pro- 
fesses to instruct in gratifying. Whether with the stateliness of 
that venerable character, she may not have taken up something 
of its austerity and frigidity ; whether in the logical terseness of 
a Hume or Robertson, the graceful ease and gay pictorial hearti- 
ness of a Herodotus or Froissart may not be wanting, is not 
the question for us here. Enough that all learners, all inquiring 
minds of every order, are gathered round her footstool, and 
reverently pondering her lessons, as the true basis of Wisdom. 
Poetry, Divinity, Politics, Physics, have each their adherents 
and adversaries ; each little guild supporting a defensive and 
offensive war for its own special domain ; while the domain of 
History is as a Free Emporium, where all these belligerents 
peaceably meet and furnish themselves ; and Sentimentalist and 
Utilitarian, Sceptic and Theologian, with one voice advise us : 
Examine History, for it is " Philosophy teaching by Expe- 
rience." 

Far be it from us to disparage such teaching, the very attempt 
at which must be precious. Neither shall we too rigidly inquire : 
How much it has hitherto profited ? Whether most of what 
little- practical wisdom men have, has come from study of 
professed History, or from other less boasted sources, whereby, 
as matters now stand, a Marlborough may become great in the 
world's business with no History save what he derives from 
Shakspeare's plays ? Nay, whether in tha^ same teaching by 
Experience, historical Philosophy has yet properly deciphered 



ON HISTORY. 179 

the first element of all science in this kind : What the aim and 
significance of that wondrous changeful Life it investigates and 
paints may be ? Whence the course of man's destinies in this 
Earth originated, and whither they are tending ? Or, indeed, 
if they have any course and tendency, are really guided forward 
by an unseen mysterious Wisdom, or only circle in blind mazes 
without recognizable guidance ? Which questions, altogether 
fundamental, one might think, in any Philosophy of History, 
have, since the era when Monkish Annalists were wont to 
answer them by the long-ago extinguished light of their Missal 
and Breviary, been by most philosophical Historians only 
glanced at dubiously and from afar ; by many, not so much as 
glanced at. 

The truth is, two difficulties, never wholly surmountable lie in 
the way. Before Philosophy can teach by Experience, the Phi- 
osophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must be gathered 
and intelligibly recorded. Now, overlooking the former consid- 
eration, and with regard only to the latter, let any one who has 
examined the current of human affairs, and how intricate, per- 
plexed, unfathomable, even when seen into with our own eyes, 
are their thousand-fold blending movements, say whether the 
true representing of it is easy or impossible. Social Life is the 
aggregate of all the individual men's Lives who constitute soci- 
ety; History is the essence of innumerable Biographies. But 
if one Biography, nay, our own Biography, study and recapit- 
ulate it as we may, remains in so many points unintelligible to us, 
how much more must these million, the very facts of which, to 
say nothing of the purport of them, we know not, and cannot 
know! 



I So THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Neither will it adequately avail us to assert that the general 
inward condition of Life is the same in all ages ; and that only 
the remarlcable deviations from the common endowment and 
common lot, and the more important variations which the out- 
ward figure of Life has from time to time undergone, deserve 
memory and record. The inward condition of Life, it may 
rather be affirmed, the conscious or half-conscious aim of man- 
kind, so far as men are not mere digesting-machines, is the same 
in no two ages ; neither are the more important outward varia- 
tions easy to fix on, or always well capable of representation. 
Which was the greater innovator, which was the more important 
personage in man's history, he who first led armies over the 
Alps, and gained the victories of Cannag and Thrasymene ; or 
the nameless boor who first hammered out for himself an iron 
spade ? When the oak-tree is felled, the whole forest echoes 
with it ; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some un- 
noticed breeze. Battles and war-tumults, which for the time din 
every ear, and with joy or terror intoxicate every heart, pass 
away like tavern-brawls ; and, except some few Marathons and 
Morgartens, are remembered by accident, not by desert. Laws 
themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life, but only the 
house wherein our Life is led : nay, they are but the bare walls 
of the house ; all whose essential furniture, the inventions and 
traditir)ns, and daily habits that regulate and support our exist- 
ence, are the work not of Dracos and Hampdens, but of Phoe- 
nician mariners, of Italian masons and Saxon metallurgists, of 
philosophers, alchymists, prophets, and all the long-forgotten 
train of artists and artisans, who from the first have been jointly 
teaching us how to think and how to act, how to rule over spirit- 



ON HISTORY. l8l 

ual and over physical Nature. Well may we say that of our 
History the more important part is lost without recovery ; and, 
— as thanksgivings were once wont to be offered "for unrecog- 
nized mercies," — look with reverence into the dark untenanted 
places of the Past, where, in formless oblivion, our chief bene- 
factors, with all their sedulous endeavors, but not with the fruit 
of these, lie entombed. 

So imperfect is that same Experience, by which Philosophy is 
to teach. Nay, even with regard to those occurrences which do 
stand recorded, which, at their origin have seemed worthy of 
record, and the summary of which constitutes what we now call 
History, is not our understanding of them altogether incom- 
plete; is it even possible to represent them as they were ? The 
old story of Sir Walter Raleigh's looking from his prison window 
on some street tumult, which afterward three witnesses reported 
in three different ways, himself differing from them all, is still a 
true lesson to us. Consider how it is that historical documents 
and records originate ; even honest records, where the reporters 
were unbiased by personal regard ; a case which, were nothing 
more wanted, must ever be among the rarest. The real leading 
features of an historical Transaction, whose movements that 
essentially characterize it, and alone deserve to be recorded, are 
nowise the foremost to be noted. At first, among the various 
witnesses, who are also parties interested, there is only vague 
wonder, and fear of hope, and the noise of Rumor's thousand 
tongues ; till, after a season, the conflict of testimonies has sub- 
sided into some general issue ; and then it is settled, by majority 
of votes, that such and such a " Crossing of the Rubicon," an 
" Impeachment of Strafford," a " Convocation of the Notables," 



1 82 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

are epochs in the world's history, cardinal points on which grand 
world-revolutions have hinged. Suppose, however, that the 
majority of votes was all wrong ; that the real cardinal points 
lay far deeper ; and had been passed over unnoticed, because 
no Seer, but only mere Onlookers, chanced to be there ! Our 
clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour ; but no 
hammer in the horologe of Time peals through the universe 
when there is a change from Era to Era. Men understand not 
what is among their hands ; as calmness is the characteristic of 
strength, so the weightiest causes may be most silent. It is, in 
no case, the real historical Transaction, but only some more or 
less plausible scheme and theory of the Transaction, or the har- 
monized result of many such schemes, each varying from the 
other and all varying from truth, that we can ever hope to 
behold. 

Nay, were our faculty of insight into passing things never so 
complete, there is still a fatal discrepancy between our manner 
of observing these, and their manner of occurring. The most 
gifted man can observe, still more can record, only the series of 
his own impressions : his observation, therefore, to say nothing 
of its other imperfections, must be successive, while the things 
done were often sinmlta7ieoiis ; the things done were not a series, 
but a group. It is not in acted, as it is in written History ; 
actual events are nowise so simply related to each other as 
parent and offspring are ; every single event is the offspring not 
of one, but of all other events prior or contemporaneous, and 
will in its turn combine with all others to give birth to new : it is 
an ever-living, ever-working Chaos of Being, wherein shape 
after shape bodies itself forth from innumerable elements. And 



ON HISTORY. 183 

this Chaos, boundless as the habitation and duration of man, 
unfathomable as the soul and destiny of man, is what the his- 
torian will depict, and scientifically gauge, we may say, by 
threading it wkh single lines of a few ells in length ! For as 
all action is, by its nature, to be figured as extended in breadth 
and in depth, as well as in length ; that is to say, is based on 
Passion and Mystery, if we investigate its origin ; and spreads 
abroad on all hands, modifying and modified ; as well as ad- 
vances toward completion, — so all Narrative is, by its nature, 
of only one dimension ; only travels forward toward one, or 
toward successive points : Narrative is linear. Action is solid. 
Alas for our " chains," or chainlets, of " causes and effects," 
which we so assiduously track through certain handbreadths of 
years and square miles, when the whole is a broad, deep Immen- 
sity, and each atom is '' chained " and complected with all ! 
Truly, if History is Philosophy teaching by Experience, the 
writer fitted to compose History is hitherto an unknown man. 
The experience itself would require All-knowledge to record it, 
— were the All-wisdom needful for such Philosophy as would 
interpret it, to be had for asking. Better were it that mere 
earthly Historians should lower such pretensions, more suitable 
for Omniscience than for human science ; and aiming only at 
some picture of the things acted, which picture itself will at best 
be a poor approximation, leave the inscrutable purport of them 
an acknowledged secret ; or at most, in reverent Faith, far differ- 
ent from that teaching of Philosophy, pause over the mysterious 
vestiges of Him, whose path is in the great deep of Time, whom 
History indeed reveals, but only all History, and in Eternity, 
will clearly reveal. 



1 84 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Such considerations truly were of small profit, did they, 
instead of teaching us vigilance and reverent humility in our 
inquiries into History, abate our esteem for them, or discourage 
us from unweariedly prosecuting them. Let us search more and 
more into the Past ; let all men explore it, as the true fountain 
of knowledge ; by whose light alone, consciously or uncon- 
sciously employed, can the Present and the Future be interpreted 
or guessed at. For though the whole meaning lies far beyond 
our ken ; yet in that complex Manuscript, covered over with 
formless inextricably entangled unknown characters — nay, 
which is a Palimpsest, and had once prophetic writing, still dimly 
legible there, — some letters, some words, maybe deciphered; 
and if no complete Philosophy, here and there an intelligible 
precept, available in practice, be gathered : well understanding, 
in the meanwhile, that it is only a little jDortion we have deci- 
phered ; that much still remains to be interpreted ; that History is 
a real Prophetic Manuscript, and can be fully interpreted by no 
man. 

But the Artist in History may be distinguished from the 
Artisan in History ; for here, as in all other provinces, there are 
Artists and Artisans ; men who labor mechanically in a depart- 
ment, without eye for the Whole, not feeling that there is a 
Whole ; and men who inform and ennoble the humblest depart- 
ment vvith an Idea of the Whole, and habitually know that only 
in the Whole is the Partial to be truly discerned. The proceed- 
ings and the duties of these two, in regard to History, must be 
altogether different. Not, indeed, that each has not a real worth, 
in his several degree. The simple husbandman can till his field, 
and by knowledge he has gained of its soil, sow it with the fit 



ON HISTORY. 185 

grain, though the deep rocks and central fires are unknown to 
him : his Httle crop hangs under and over the firmament of stars, 
and sails through whole untracked celestial spaces, between 
Aries and Libra; nevertheless, it ripens for him in due season, 
and he gathers it safe into his barn. As a husbandman he is 
blameless in disregarding those higher wonders ; but as a thinker, 
and faithful inquirer into Nature, he were wrong. So likewise 
is it with the Historian, who examines some special aspect of 
History; and from this or that combination of circumstances, 
political, moral, economical, and the issues it has led to, infers 
that such and such properties belong to human society, and that 
the like circumstances will produce the like issue ; which 
inference, if other trials confirm it, must be held true and 
practically valuable. He is wrong only, and an artisan, when he 
fancies that these properties, discovered or discoverable, exhaust 
the matter; and sees not, at every step, that it is inexhaustible. 
However, that class of cause-and-effect speculators, with whom 
no wonder would remain wonderful, but all things in Heaven 
and Earth must be computed and " accounted for ; " and even 
the Unknown, the Infinite in man's Life, had, under the words 
enthusiasm, superstition, spirit of the age, and so forth, obtained, 
as it were, an algebraical symbol and given value, — have now 
wellnigh played their part in European culture ; and may be 
considered, as in most countries, even in England itself, where 
they linger the latest, verging toward extinction. He who reads 
the inscrutable Book of Nature as if it were a Merchant's 
Ledger, is justly suspected of having never seen that Book, but 
only some school Synopsis thereof; from which, if taken for 
the real Book, more error than insight is to be derived. 



1 86 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Doubtless, also, it is with a growing feeling of the infinite 
nature of History, that in these times, the old principle, division 
of labor, has been so widely applied to it. The Political His- 
torian, once almost the sole cultivator of History, has now found 
various associates, who strive to elucidate other phases of human 
Life ; of which, as hinted above, the political conditions it is 
passed under are but one, and though the primar}'^, perhaps not 
the most important, of the many outward arrangements. Of 
this Historian himself, moreover, in his own special department, 
new and higher things are beginning to be expected. From of 
old, it was too often to be reproachfully observed of him, that 
he dwelt with disproportionate fondness in Senate-houses, in 
Battle-fields, nay even in King's Antechambers ; forgetting, that 
far away from such scenes, the mighty tide of Thought and 
Action was still rolling on its wondrous course, in gloom and 
brightness ; and in its thousand remote valleys, a whole world 
of Existence, with or without an earthly sun of Happiness to 
warm it, with or without a heavenly sun of Holiness to purify 
and sanctify it, was blossoming and fading, whether the " famous 
victory " were won or lost. The time seems coming when much 
of this must be amended ; and he who sees no world but that of 
courts and camps ; and writes only how soldiers were drilled 
and shot, and how this ministerial conjuror out-conjured that 
other,- and then guided, or at least held, something which he called 
the rudder of Government, but which was rather the spigot of 
Taxation, wherewith, in place of steering, he could tap, and the 
more cunningly the nearer the lees, — will pass for a more or 
less instructive Gazetteer, but will no longer be called an Histo- 
rian. 



ON HISTORY. 187 

However, the political Historian, were his work performed 
with all conceivable perfection, can accomplish but a part, and 
still leaves room for numerous fellow-laborers. Foremost among 
these comes the Ecclesiastical Historian ; endeavoring with 
catholic or sectarian view, to trace the progress of the Church ; 
of that portion of the social establishments, which respects our 
religious condition ; as the other portion does our civil, or rather, 
in the long-run, our economical condition. Rightly conducted, 
this department were undoubtedly the more important of the 
two ; inasmuch as it concerns us more to understand how man's 
moral well-being had been and might be promoted, than to 
understand in the like sort his physical well-being ; which latter 
is ultimately the aim of all Political arrangements. For the 
physically happiest is simply the safest, the strongest; and, in 
all conditions of Government, Power (whether of wealth as in 
these days, or of arms and adherents as in old days) is the only 
outward emblem and purchase-money of Good. True Good, 
however, unless we reckon pleasure synonymous with it, is said 
to be rarely, or rather never, offered for sale in the market 
where that coin passes current. So that, for man's true advan- 
tage, not the outward condition of his life, but the inward and 
spiritual, is of prime influence ; not the form of Government he 
lives under, and the power he can accumulate there, but the 
Church he is a member of, and the degree of moral elevation 
he can acquire by means of its instruction. Church history, 
then, did it speak wisely, would have momentous secrets to teach 
us: nay, in its highest degree, it were a sort of continued Holy 
writ ; our Sacred Books being, indeed, only a History of the 
primeval Church, as it first arose in man's soul, and symbolically 



1 88 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

embodied itself in his external life. How far our actual Church 
Historians fall below such unattainable standards, nay, below 
quite attainable approximations thereto, we need not point out. 
Of the Ecclesiastical Historian we have to complain, as we did 
of his Political fellow-craftsman, that his inquiries turn rather on 
the outward mechanism, the mere hulls and superficial accidents 
of the object, than on the object itself : as if the Church lay in 
Bishops' Chapter-houses, and Ecumenic Council-halls, and Car- 
dinals' Conclaves, and not far more in the hearts of Believing 
Men ; in whose walk and conversation, as influenced thereby, its 
chief manifestations were to be looked for, and its progress or 
decline ascertained. The Histor}' of the Church is a History 
of the Invisible as well as of the Visible Church ; which latter, if 
disjoined from the former, is but a vacant edifice ; gilded, it may 
be, and overhung with old votive gifts, yet useless, nay, pestilen- 
tially unclean ; to write whose history is less important than to 
forward its downfall. 

Of a less ambitious character are the Histories that relate to 
special separate provinces of human Action ; to Sciences, Prac- 
tical Arts, Institutions, and the like ; matters which do not imply 
an epitome of man's whole interest and form of life ; but 
wherein, though each is still connected with all, the spirit of 
each, at least its material results, may be in some degree 
evolvG^l without so strict a reference to that of the others. 
Highest in dignity and difficulty, under this head, would be our 
histories of Philosophy, of man's opinions and theories respect- 
ing the nature of his Being, and relations to the Universe Visible 
and Invisible : which History, indeed, were it fitly treated, or fit 
for right treatment, would be a province of Church History ; the 



OiV HISTORY. 189 

logical or dogmatical province thereof; for Philosophy, in its 
true sense, is or should be the soul, of which Religion, Worship 
is the body ; in the healthy state of things the Philosopher and 
Priest were one and the same. But Philosophy itself is far 
enough from wearing this character ; neither have its Historians 
been men, generally speaking, that could in the smallest degree 
approximate it thereto. Scarcely since the rude era of the 
Magi and Druids has that same healthy identification of Priest 
and Philosopher had place in any country: but rather the 
worship of divine things, and the scientific investigation of 
divine things, have been in quite different hands, their relations 
not friendly but hostile. Neither have the Briickers and 
Biihles, to say nothing of the many unhappy Enfields who have 
treated of that latter department, been more than barren report- 
ers, often unintelligent and unintelligible reporters, of the 
doctrine uttered ; without force to discover how the doctrine 
originated, or what reference it bore to its time and country, to 
the spiritual position of mankind there and then. Nay, such a 
task did not perhaps lie before them, as a thing to be attempted. 
Art also and Literature are intimately blended with Religion ; 
as it were, outworks and abutments, by which that highest 
pinnacle in our inward world gradually connects itself with the 
general level, and becomes accessible therefrom. He who 
should write a proper History of Poetry, would depict for us the 
successive Revelations which man had obtained of the Spirit of 
Nature ; under what aspects he had caught and endeavored to 
body forth some glimpse of that unspeakable Beauty, which in 
its highest clearness is Religion, is the inspiration of a Prophet, 
yet in one or the other degree must inspire every true Singer, 



1 90 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

were his theme never so humble. We should see by what steps 
men had ascended to the Temple; how near tliey had ap- 
proached ; by what ill-hap they had, for long periods, turned 
away from it, and grovelled on the plain with no music in the 
air, or blindly struggled toward other heights. That among all 
our Eichhorns and Wartons there is no such Historian, must be 
too clear to every one. Nevertheless, let us not despair of far 
nearer approaches to that excellence. Above all, let us keep 
the Ideal of it ever in our eye ; for thereby alone have we even a 
chance to reach it. 

Our histories of Laws and Constitutions, wherein many a 
Montesquieu and Hallam have labored with acceptance, are of 
a much simpler nature ; yet deep enough if thoroughly investiga- 
ted ; and useful, when authentic, even with little depth. Then 
we have Histories of Medicine, of Mathematics, of Astronomy, 
Commerce, Chivalry, Monkery; and Goguets and Beckmanns 
have come forward with what might be the most bountiful 
contribution of all, a History of Inventions. Of all which sorts, 
and many more not here enumerated, not yet devised and put in 
practice, the merit and the proper scheme may, in our present 
limits, require no exposition. 

In this manner, though, as above remarked, all Action is 
extended three ways, and the general sum of human Action is a 
whole Universe, with all limits of it unknown, does History 
strive by running path after path, through the Impassable, in 
manifold directions and intersections, to secure for us some 
oversight of the Whole ; in which endeavor, if each Historian 
look well around him from his path, tracking it out with the eye^ 
not, as is more common, with the nose, she may at last prove 



ON HISTORY. 



191 



not altogether unsuccessful. Praying only that increased divi- 
sion of labor do not here, as elsewhere, aggravate our already 
strong Mechanical tendencies, so that in the manual dexterity 
for parts we lose all command over the whole, and the hope of 
any Philosophy of History be farther off than ever — let us all 
wish her jrreat and greater success. 



HISTORY. 

/ 

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
(Born 1800, Died 1859.) 




O write history respectably — that is, to abbreviate 
despatches, and make extracts from speeches, to 
intersperse in due proportion epithets of praise and 
abhorrence, to draw up antithetical characters of 
great men, setting forth how many contradictory virtues and 
vices they united, and abounding in withs and withoiits ; all this 
is very easy. But to be a really great historian is perhaps the 
rarest of intellectual distinctions. Many scientific works are, in 
their kind, absolutely perfect. There are poems which we 
should be inclined to designate as faultless, or as disfigured 
only by blemishes which pass unnoticed in the general blaze of 
excellence. There are speeches, some speeches of Demosthenes 
partictriarl}^, in which it would be impossible to alter a word 
without altering it for the worse. But we are acquainted with 
no history which approaches to our notion of what a history 
ought to be — with no history which does not widely depart, 
either on the right hand or on the left, from the exact line. 
The cause may easily be assigned. This province of literature 
192 



HISTORY. 193 

is a debatable land. It lies on the confines of two distinct terri- 
tories. It is under the jurisdiction of two hostile powers ; and, 
like other districts similarly situated, it is ill-defined, ill-culti- 
vated, and ill-regulated. Instead of being equally shared 
between its two rulers, the Reason and the Imagination, it falls 
alternately under the sole and absolute dominion of each. It is 
sometimes fiction. It is sometimes theor)^ 

History, it has been said, is philosophy teaching by examples. 
Unhappily, what the philosophy gains in soundness and depth, 
the examples generally lose in vividness. A perfect historian 
must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his 
narrative affecting and picturesque. Yet he must control it so 
absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he 
finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his 
own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner. Yet he 
must possess sufficient self-command to abstain from casting his 
facts in the mould of his hypothesis. Those who can justly 
estimate these almost insuperable difficulties will not think it 
strange that every writer should have failed, either in the narra- 
tive or in the speculative department of history. 

It may be laid down as a general rule, though subject to 
considerable qualifications and exceptions, that history begins in 
Novel, and ends in Essay. Of the romantic historians Herodo- 
tus is the earliest and the best. His animation, his simple- 
hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and 
dialogue, and the pure, sweet flow of his language, place him at 
the head of narrators. He reminds us of a delightful child. 
There is a grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkward- 
ness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, 



1 94 THOMAS BASING TON MA CA ULA V. 

an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no writer 
who makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of 
the reader. At the distance of three-and-twenty centuries, we 
feel for him the same sort of pitying fondness which Fontaine 
and Gay are said to have inspired in society. He has written 
an incomparable book. He has written something better perhaps 
than the best history ; but he has not written a good history ; he 
is, from the first to the last chapter, an inventor. We do not 
here refer merely to those gross fictions, with which he has been 
reproached by the critics of later times. We speak of that 
coloring which is equally diffused over his whole narrative, and 
which perpetually leaves the most sagacious reader in doubt 
what to reject and what to receive. The most authentic parts 
of his work bear the same relation to his wildest legends which 
Henry the Fifth bears to the Tempest. There was an expedi- 
tion undertaken by Xerxes against Greece ; and there was an 
invasion of France. There was a battle at Platea ; and there 
was a battle at Agincourt. Cambridge and Exeter, the Con- 
stable and the Dauphin, were persons as real as Demaratus and 
Pausanias. The harangue of the Archbishop on the Salic Law 
and the Book of Numbers differs much less from the orations 
which have in all ages proceeded from the Right Reverend 
bench, than the speeches of Mardonius and Artabanus from 
those' which were delivered at the Council-board of Susa. 
Shakespeare gives us enumerations of armies, and returns of 
killed and wounded, which are not, we suspect, much less accvirate 
than those of Herodotus. There are passages in Herodotus 
nearly as long as acts of Shakespeare, in which everything is 
told dramatically, and in which the narrative serves only the 



HISTORY. 195 

purpose of stage directions. It is possible, no doubt, that the 
substance of some real conversations may have been reported to 
the historian. But events which, if they ever happened, hap- 
pened in ages and nations so remote that the particulars could 
never have been known to him, are related with the greatest 
minuteness of detail. We have all that Candaules said to 
Gyges, and all that passed between Astyagus and Harpagus. 
We are, therefore, unable to judge whether, in the account 
which he gives of transactions respecting which he might possi- 
bly have been well informed, we can trust to anything beyond 
the naked outline ; whether, for example, the answer of Gelon 
to the ambassadors of the Grecian confederacy, or the expres- 
sions which passed between Aristides and Themistocles at their 
famous interview, have been correctly transmitted to us. The 
great events are no doubt faithfully related. So, probably, are 
many of the slighter circumstances ; but which of them it is 
impossible to ascertain. The fictions are so much like the 
facts, and the facts so much like the fictions, that, with respect 
to many most interesting particulars, our belief is neither given 
nor withheld, but remains in an uneasy and interminable state of 
abeyance. We know that there is truth, but we cannot exactly 
decide where it lies. 

The faults of Herodotus are the faults of a simple and imagi- 
native mind. Children and servants are remarkably Herodotean 
in their style of narration. They tell everything dramatically. 
Their says hcs and says shes are proverbial. Every person who 
has had to settle their disputes knows that, even when they have 
no intention to deceive, their reports of conversation always 
require to be carefully sifted. If an educated man were giving 



196 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

• 

an account of the late change of administration, he would say : 
" Lord Goderich- resigned ; and the King, \\\ consequence, sent 
for the Duke of Wellington." A porter tells the story as if he 
had been hid behind the curtains of the royal bed at Windsor : 
"So Lord Goderich says: ' I cannot manage this business; I 
must go out.' So the King says, — says he: 'Well, then, I 
must send for the Duke of Welhngton — that 's all.' " This is 
in the very manner of the father of history. 

Herodotus wrote as it was natural that he should write. He 
•wrote for a nation susceptible, curious, lively, insatiably desirous 
of novelty and excitement ; for a nation in which the fine arts 
had attained their highest excellence, but in which philosophy 
was still in its infancy. His countrymen had but recently begun 
to cultivate prose composition. Public transactions had gener- 
ally been recorded in verse. The first historians might, there- 
fore, indulge, without fear of censure, in the license allowed to 
their predecessors the bards. Books were few. The events of 
former times were learned from tradition and from popular 
ballads ; the manners of foreign countries from the reports of 
travellers. It is well known that the mystery which overhangs 
what is distant, either in space or time, frequently prevents us 
from censuring as unnatural what we perceive to be impossible. 
We stare at a dragoon who has killed three French cuirassiers, 
as a prodigy ; yet we read, without the least disgust, how God- 
frey slew his thousands, and Rinaldo his ten thousands. Within 
the last hundred years, stories about China and Bantam, which 
ought not to have imposed on an old nurse, were gravely laid 
down as foundations of political theories by eminent philoso- 
phers. What the time of the crusades is to us, the generation 



HISTORY. 197 

of Croesus and Solon was to the Greeks of the time of Herodo- 
tus. Babylon was to them what Pekin was to the French 
Academicians of the last century. 

For such a people was the book of Herodotus composed ; and, 
if we may trust to a report, not sanctioned indeed by writers of 
high authority, but in itself not improbable, it was composed not 
to be read, but to be heard. It was not to the slow circulation 
of a few copies, which the rich only could possess, that the 
aspiring author looked for his reward. The great Olympian 
festival — the solemnity which collected multitudes, proud of 
the Grecian name, from the wildest mountains of Doris, and the 
remotest 'colonies of Italy and Libya, — was to witness his tri- 
umph. The interest of the narrative, and the beauty of the 
style, were aided by the imposing effect of recitation, — by the 
splendor of the spectacle, — by the powerful influence oT sym- 
pathy. A critic who could have asked for authorities in the 
midst of such a scene, must have been of a cold and sceptical 
nature; and few such critics were there. As was the historian, 
such were the auditors, — inquisitive, credulous, easily moved 
by religious awe or patriotic enthusiasm. They were the very 
men to hear with delight of strange beasts, and birds, and trees, 
— of dwarfs, and giants, and cannibals, — of gods, whose very 
names it was impiety to utter, — of ancient dynasties, which had 
left behind them monuments surpassing all the works of later 
times, — of towns like provinces, — of rivers like seas, — of 
stupendous walls, and temples, and pyramids, — of the rites 
which the Magi performed at daybreak on the tops of the moun- 
tains, — of the secrets inscribed on the eternal obelisks of 
Memphis. With equal delight they would have listened to the 



198 THOMAS BASING TOM MAC AULA Y. 

graceful romances of their own country. They now heard of 
the exact accomplishment of obscure predictions, of the punish- 
ment of crimes over which the justice of heaven had seemed to 
slumber, — of dreams, omens, warnings from the dead, — of 
princesses, for whom noble suitors contended in every generous 
exercise of strength and skill, — of infants, strangely preserved 
from the dagger of the assassin, to fulfil high destinies. 

As the narrative approached their own times, the interest 
became still more absorbing. The chronicler had now to tell 
the story of that great conflict, from which Europe dates its 
intellectual and political supremacy, — a story which, even at 
this distance of time, is the most marvellous and the most touch- 
ing in the annals of the human race, — a story, abounding with 
all that is wild and wonderful, with all that is pathetic and 
animating ; with the gigantic caprices of infinite wealth and des- 
potic power, — with the mightier miracles of wisdom, of virtue, 
and of courage. He told them of rivers dried up in a day, — 
of provinces famished for a meal, — of a passage for ships hewn 
through the mountains, — of a road for armies spread upon the 
waves, — of monarchies and commonwealths swept away, — of 
anxiety, of terror, of confusion, of despair! — and then of proud 
and stubborn hearts tried in that extremity of evil, and not 
found wanting, — of resistance long maintained against des- 
perate, odds, — of lives dearly sold, when resistance could be 
maintained no more, — of signal deliverance, and of unsparing 
revenge. Whatever gave a stronger air of reality to a narrative 
so well calculated to inflame the passions, and to flatter national 
pride, was certain to be favorably received. 

Between the time at which Herodotus is said to have com- 



HISTORY. 199 

posed his history, and the close of the Peloponnesian War, 
about forty years elapsed — forty years, crowded with great 
military and political events. The circumstances of that period 
produced a great effect on the Grecian character ; and nowhere 
was this effect so remarkable as in the illustrious democracy of 
Athens. An Athenian, indeed, even in the time of Herodotus, 
would scarcely have written a book so romantic and garrulous as 
that of Herodotus. As civilization advanced, the citizens of that 
famous republic became still less visionary, and still less simple- 
hearted. They aspired to know, where their ancestors had been 
content to doubt ; they began to doubt, where their ancestors 
had thought it their duty to believe. Aristophanes is fond of 
alluding to this change in the temper of his countrymen. The 
father and son, in " The Clouds," are evidently representatives 
of the generations to which they respectively belonged. Noth- 
ing more clearly illustrates the nature of this moral revolution, 
than the change which passed upon tragedy. The wild sublimity 
of -^schylus became the scoff of every young Phidippides. 
Lectures on abstruse points of philosophy, the fine distinctions 
of casuistry, and the dazzling fence of rhetoric, were substituted 
for poetry. The language lost something of that infantine 
sweetness which had characterized it. It became less like the 
ancient Tuscan, and more like the modern French. 

The fashionable logic of the Greeks was, indeed, far from 
strict. Logic never can be strict where books are scarce, and 
where information is conveyed orally. We are all aware how 
frequently fallacies which, when set down on paper, are at once 
detected, pass for unanswerable arguments when dexterously 
and volubly urged in Parliament, at the bar, or in private con- 



20O THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

versation. The reason is evident. We cannot inspect them 
closely enough to perceive their inaccuracy. We cannot readily 
compare them with each other. We lose sight of one part of 
the subject, before another, which ought to be received in con- 
nection with it, comes before us ; and as there is no immutable 
record of what has been admitted, and of what has been denied, 
direct contradictions pass muster with little difficulty. Almost 
all the education of a Greek consisted in talking and listening. 
His opinions on government were picked up in the debates of 
the assembly. If he wished to study metaphysics, instead of 
shutting himself up with a book, he walked down to the market- 
place to look for a sophist. So completely were men formed to 
these habits, that even writing acquired a conversational air. 
The philosophers adopted the form of dialogue, as the most 
natural mode of communicating knowledge. Their reasonings 
have the merits and the defects which belong to that species of 
composition ; and are characterized rather by quickness and 
subtlety, than by depth and precision. Truth is exhibited in 
parts, and by glimpses. Innumerable clever hints are given ; 
but no sound and durable system is erected. The argumentum 
ad hominem, a kind of argument most efficacious in debate, but 
utterly useless for the investigation of general principles, is 
among their favorite resources. Hence, though nothing can 
be more admirable than the skill which Socrates displays in the 
conversations which Plato has reported or invented, his victories, 
for the most part, seem to us unprofitable. A trophy is set up ; 
but no new province is added to the dominions of the human 
mind. 

Still, where thousands of keen and ready intellects were con- 



HISTORY. 20 1 

stantly emploj-ed in speculating on the qualities of actions, and 
on the principles of government, it was impossible that history 
should retain its old character. It became less gossiping and 
less picturesque ; but much more accurate, and somewhat more 
scientific. 

The history of Thucydides differs from that of Herodotus as 
a portrait differs from the representation of an imaginary scene; 
as the Burke or Fox of Reynolds differs from his Ugolino or 
his Beaufort. In the former case, the archetype is given ; in 
the latter, it is created. The faculties which are required for 
the latter purpose are of a higher and rarer order than those 
which suffice for the former, and indeed necessarily comprise 
them. He who is able to paint what he sees with the eye of the 
mind, will surely be able to paint what he sees with the eye of 
the body. He who can invent a stor}', and tell it well, will also 
be able to tell, in an interesting manner, a story which he has 
not invented. If, in practice, some of the best writers of fiction 
have been among the worst writers of history, it has been be- 
cause one of their talents had merged in another so completel}', 
that it could not be severed ; because, having long been habit- 
uated to invent and narrate at the same time, they found it 
impossible to narrate without inventing. 

Some capricious and discontented artists have affected to con- 
sider portrait-painting as unworthy of a man of genius. Some 
critics have spoken in the same contemptuous manner of history. 
Johnson puts the case thus : The historian tells either what is 
false or what is true. In the former case he is no historian. In 
the latter, he has no opportunity for displaying his abilities. 
For truth is one ; and all who tell the truth must tell it alike. 



202 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

It is not difficult to elude both the horns of this dilemma. 
We will recur to the analogous art of portrait-painting. Any 
man with eyes and hands may be taught to take a likeness. 
The process, up to a certain point, is merely mechanical. If 
this were all, a man of talents might justly despise the occupa- 
tion. But we could mention portraits which are resemblances, 
— but not mere resemblances; faithful, — but much more than 
faithful ; portraits which condense into one point of time, and 
exhibit, at a single glance, the whole history of turbid and 
eventful lives — in which the eye seems to scrutinize us, and the 
mouth to command us — in which the brow menaces, and the 
lip almost quivers with scorn — in which every wrinkle is a 
comment on some important transaction. The account which 
Thucydides has given of the retreat from Syracuse, is, among 
narratives, what Vandyke's Lord Strafford is among paintings. 

Diversity, it is said, implies error : truth is one, and admits of 
no degrees. We answer, that this principle holds good only in 
abstract reasonings. When we talk of the truth of imitation in 
the fine arts, we mean an imperfect and a graduated truth. No 
picture is exactly like the original : nor is a picture good in 
proportion as it is like the original. When Sir Thomas Lawrence 
paints a handsome peeress, he does not contemplate her through 
a powerful microscope, and transfer to the canvas the pores of 
the skin, the blood-vessels of the eye, and all the other beauties 
which Gulliver discovered in the Brobdignaggian maids of 
honor. If he were to do this, the effect would not merely be 
unpleasant, but unless the scale of the picture were proportion- 
ately enlarged, would be absolutely false. And, after all, a 
microscope of greater power than that which he had employed, 



HISTORY. 203 

would convict him of innumerable omissions. The same may 
be said of liistor}'. Perfectly and absolutely true it cannot be : 
for to be perfectly and absolutely true it ought to record all the 
slightest particulars of the slightest transactions — all the things 
done and all the words uttered during the time of which it 
treats. The omission of any circumstance, however insignificant, 
would be a defect. If history were written thus, the Bodleian 
Library would not contain the occurrences of a week. What is 
told in the fullest and most accurate annals bears an infinitely 
small proportion to what is suppressed. The difi:erence between 
the copious work of Clarendon, and the account of the civil 
wars in the abridgment of Goldsmith, vanishes, when compared 
with the immense mass of facts, respecting which both are 
equally silent. 

No picture, then, and no history, can present us with the 
whole truths : but those are the best pictures and the best 
histories which exhibit such parts of the truth as most nearly 
produce the effect of the whole. He who is deficient in the art 
of selection may, by showing nothing but the truth produce all 
the effect of the grossest falsehood. It perpetually happens 
that one writer tells less truth than another, merely because he 
tells more truths. In the imitative arts we constantly see this. 
There are lines in the human face, and objects in landscape, 
which stand in such relations to each other, that they ought 
either to be all introduced into a painting together, or all omitted 
together. A sketch into which none of them enters, may be 
excellent; but if some are given and others left out, though 
there are more points of likeness, there is less likeness. An 
outline scrawled with a pen, which seizes the marked features of 



204 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

a countenance, will give a much stronger idea of it than a bad 
painting in oils. Yet the worst painting in oils that ever hung 
at Somerset House resembles the original in many more partic- 
ulars. A bust of white marble may give an excellent idea of a 
blooming face. Color the lips and cheeks of the bust, leaving 
the hair and eyes unaltered, and the similarity, instead of being 
more striking, will be less so. 

History has its foreground and its background ; and it is 
principally in the management of its perspective that one artist 
differs from another. Some events must be represented on a 
large scale, others diminished ; the great majority will be lost in 
the dimness of the horizon ; and a general idea of their joint 
effect will be given by a few slight touches. 

In this respect, no writer has ever equalled Thucydides. He 
was a perfect master of the art of gradual diminution. His 
history is sometimes as concise as a chronological chart ; yet it 
is always perspicuous. It is sometimes as minute as one of 
Lovelace's letters ; yet it is never prolix. He never fails to 
contract and to expand it in the right place. 

Thucydides borrowed from Herodotus the practice of putting 
speeches of his own into the mouths of his characters. In 
Herodotus this usage is scarcely censurable. It is of a piece 
with his whole manner. But it is altogether incongruous in the 
work of his successor, and violates, not only the accuracy of 
history, but the decencies of fiction. When once we enter into 
the spirit of Herodotus, we find no inconsistency. The conven- 
tional probability of his drama is preserved from the beginning 
to the end. The deliberate orations, and the familiar dialogues 
are in strict keeping with each other. But the speeches of 



HISTORY. 205 

Thucydides are neither preceded nor followed by anything with 
which they harmonize. They give to the whole book something 
of the grotesque character of those Chinese pleasure-grounds, in 
which perpendicular rocks of granite start up in the midst of a 
soft green plain. Invention is shocking, where truth is in such 
close juxtaposition with it. 

Thucydides honestly tells us that some of these discourses 
are purely fictitious. He may have reported the substance of 
others correctly. But it is clear from the internal evidence that 
he has preserved no more than the substance. His own pecu- 
liar habits of thought and expression are everywhere discern- 
ible. Individual and national peculiarities are seldom to be 
traced in the sentiments, and never in the diction. The oratory 
of the Corinthians and Thebans is not less Attic, either in 
matter or in manner, than that of the Athenians. The style of 
Cleon is as pure, as austere, as terse, and as significant as that 
of Pericles. 

In spite of this great fault it must be allowed that Thucydides 
has surpassed all his rivals in the art of historical narration, in 
the art of producing an effect on the imagination, by skilful 
selection and disposition, without indulging in the license of 
invention. But narration, though an important part of the busi- 
ness of an historian, is not the whole. To append a moral to a 
work of fiction, is either useless or superfluous. A fiction may 
give a more impressive effect to what is already known, but it 
can teach nothing new. If it presents to us characters and 
trains of events to which our experience furnishes us with 
nothing similar, instead of deriving instruction from it we pro- 
nounce it unnatural. We do not form our opinions from it, but 



206 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

we try it by our preconceived opinions. Fiction, therefore, is 
essentially imitative. Its merit consists in its resemblance to a 
model with which we are already familiar, or to which at least 
we can instantly refer. Hence it is that the anecdotes which 
interest us most strongly in authentic narrative, are offensive 
when introduced into novels ; that which is called the romantic 
part of the history is in fact the least romantic. It is delightful 
as history, because it contradicts our previous notions of human 
nature, and of the connection of causes and effects. It is, on 
that very account, shocking and incongruous in fiction. In 
fiction, the principles are given to find the facts : in history, the 
facts are given to find the principles ; and the writer who does 
not explain the phenomena as well as state them, performs only 
one half of his office. Facts are the mere dross of history. It 
is from the' abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies 
latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives 
its whole value. And the precious particles are generally com- 
bined with the baser in such a manner that the separation is a 
task of the utmost difficulty. 

Here Thucydides is deficient : the deficiency, indeed, is not 
discreditable to him. It was the inevitable effect of circum- 
stances. It was in the nature of things necessary that, in some 
part of its progress through political science, the human mind 
should reach that point which it attained in his time. Knowl- 
edge advances by steps, and not by leaps. The axioms of an 
English debating club would have been startling and mysterious 
paradoxes to the most enlightened statesmen of Athens. But it 
would be as absurd to speak contemptuously of the Athenian on 
this account, as to ridicule Strabo for not having given us an 



HISTORY. 207 

account of Chili, or to talk of Ptolemy as we talk of Sir Richard 
Phillips. Still, when we wish for solid geographical informa- 
tion, we must prefer the solemn coxcombry of Pinkerton, to the 
noble work of Strabo. If we wanted instruction respecting 
the solar system, we should consult the silliest girl from a 
boarding-school, rather than Ptolemy. 

Thucydides was undoubtedly a sagacious and reflecting man. 
This clearly appears from the ability with which he discusses 
practical questions. But the talent of deciding on the circum- 
tances of a particular case is often possessed in the highest 
perfection by persons destitute of the power of generalization. 
Men skilled in the military tactics of civilized nations have been 
amazed at the far-sightedness and penetration which a Mohawk 
displays in concerting his stratagems, or in discerning those of 
his enemies. In England, no class possesses so much of that 
peculiar ability which is required for constructing ingenious 
schemes and for obviating remote difficulties, as the thieves and 
the thief-takers. Women have more of this dexterity than men. 
Lawyers have more of it than statesmen : statesmen have more 
of it than philosophers. Monk had more of it than Harrington 
and all his club. Walpole had more of it than Adam Smith or 
Beccaria, Indeed, the species of discipline by which this dex- 
terity is acquired, tends to contract the mind and to render it 
incapable of abstract reasoning. 

The Grecian statesmen of the age of Thucydides were distin- 
guished by their practical sagacity, their insight into motives, 
their skill in devising means for the attainment of their ends. 
A state of society in which the rich were constantly planning 
the oppression of the poor, and the poor the spoliation of the 



208 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

rich, in which the ties of party had superseded those of country, 
in which revolutions and counter-revolutions were events of 
daily occurrence, was naturally prolific in desperate and crafty 
political adventurers. This was the very school in which men 
were likely to acquire the dissimulation of Mazarin, the judi- 
cious temerity of Richelieu, the penetration, the exquisite tact, 
the almost instinctive presentiment of approaching events which 
gave so much authority to the counsel of Shaftesbury, that " it 
was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God." In this 
school Thucydides studied ; and his wisdom is that which such a 
school would naturally afford. He judges better of circum- 
stances than of principles. The more a question is narrowed, 
the better he reasons upon it. His work suggests many most 
important considerations respecting the first principles of gov- 
ernment and morals, the growth of factions, the organization of 
armies, and the mutual relations of communities. Yet all his 
general observations on these subjects are very superficial. 
His most judicious remarks differ from the remarks of a really 
philosophical historian, as a sum correctly cast up by a book- 
keeper, from a general expression discovered by an algebraist. 
The former is useful only in a single transaction ; the latter may 
be applied to an infinite number of cases. 

This opinion will, we fear, be considered as heterodox. 
For,, not to speak of the illusion which the sight of a Greek 
type, or the sound of a Greek diphthong, often produces, there 
are some peculiarities in the manner of Thucydides, which in no 
small degree have tended to secure to him the reputation of pro- 
fundity. His book is evidently the book of a man and a states- 
man ; and in this respect presents a remarkable contrast to the 



HISTORY. 209 

delightful childishness of Herodotus. Throughout it there is an 
air of matured power, of grave and melancholy reflection, of 
impartiality and habitual self-command. His feelings are 
rarely indulged, and speedily repressed. Vulgar prejudices of 
every kind, and particularly vulgar superstitions, he treats with 
a cold and sober disdain peculiar to himself. His style is 
weighty, condensed, antithetical, and not unfrequently obscure. 
But when we look at his political philosophy, without regard to 
these circumstances, we find him to have been, what indeed it 
would have been a miracle if he had not been, simply an Athe- 
nian of the fifth century before Christ. 

Xenophon is commonly placed, but we think without much 
reason, in the same rank with Herodotus and Thucydides. He 
resembles them, indeed, in the purity and sweetness of his style ; 
but in spirit, he rather resembles that later school of historians, 
whose works seem to be fables, composed for a moral, and who, 
in their eagerness to give us warnings and example, forgot to 
give us men and women. The life of Cyrus, whether we look 
upon it as a history or a romance, seems to us a very wretched 
performance. The Expedition of the Ten Thousand, and the 
History of Grecian Affairs, are certainly pleasant reading ; but 
they indicate no great power of mind. In truth Xenophon, 
though his taste was elegant, his disposition amiable, and his 
intercourse with the world extensive, had, we suspect, rather a 
weak head. Such was evidently the opinion of that extraor- 
dinary man to whom he early attached himself, and for whose 
memory he entertained an idolatrous veneration. He came in 
only for the milk with which Socrates nourished his babes in 
philosophy. A few saws of morality, and a few of the simplest 



210 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

doctrines of natural religion, were enough for the good young 
man. The strong meat, the bold speculations on physical and 
metaphysical science, were reserved for auditors of a different 
description. Even the lawless habits of a captain of mercenary 
troops could not change the tendency which the character 
of Xenophon early acquired. To the last, he seems to have 
retained a sort of heathen Puritanism. The sentiments of piety 
and virtue which abound in his works, are those of a well-mean- 
ing man, somewhat timid and narrow-minded, devout from 
constitution rather than from rational conviction. He was as 
superstitious as Herodotus, but in a way far more offensive. 
The very peculiarities which charm us in an infant, the toothless 
mumbling, the stammering, the tottering, the helplessness, the 
causeless tears and laughter, are disgusting in old age. In the 
same manner, the absurdity which precedes a period of general 
intelligence is often pleasing ; that which follows it is contemp- 
tible. The nonsense of Herodotus is that of a baby. The 
nonsense of Xenophon is that of a dotard. His stories about 
dreams, omens, and prophecies, present a strange contrast to 
the passages in which the shrewd and incredulous Thucydides 
mentions the popular superstitions. It is not quite clear that 
Xenophon was honest in his credulity ; his fanaticism was in 
some degree politic. He would have made an excellent member 
of the Apostolic Camarilla. An Alarmist by nature, and Aris- 
tocrat by part}', he carried to an unreasonable excess his horror 
of popular turbulence. The quiet atrocity of Sparta did not 
shock him in the same manner ; for he hated tumult more than 
crimes. He was desirous to find restraints which might curb the 
passions of the multitude ; and he absurdly fancied that he had 



HISTORY. 211 

found them in a religion witliout evidences or sanction, precepts 
or example, in a frigid system of Theophilanthropy, supported 
by nursery tales. 

Polybius and Arrian have given us authentic accounts of facts, 
and here their merit ends. They were not men of comprehen- 
sive minds ; they had not the art of telling a story in an inter- 
esting manner. They have in consequence been thrown into- 
the shade by writers who, though less studious of truth than 
themselves, understood far better the art of producing effect, — 
by Livy and Quintus Curtius. 

Yet Polybius and Arrian deserve high praise, when compared 
with the writers of that school of which Plutarch may be con- 
sidered as the head. For the historians of this class we must 
confess that we entertain a peculiar aversion. They seem to 
have been pedants, who, though destitute of those valuable 
qualities which are frequently found in conjunction with pedan- 
try, thought themselves great philosophers and great politicians. 
They not only mislead their readers in every page, as to partic- 
ular facts, but they appear to have altogether misconceived the 
whole character of the times of which they write. They were 
inhabitants of an empire bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and 
the Euphrates, by the ice of Scythia and the sands of Mauri- 
tania ; composed of nations whose manners, whose languages, 
whose religion, whose countenance and complexions, were 
widely different, governed by one mighty despotism, which had 
risen on the ruins of a thousand commonwealths and kingdoms. 
Of liberty, such as it is in small democracies ; of patriotism, 
such as it is in small independent communities of any kind, they 
had, and they could have, no experimental knowledge. But 



212 THOMAS BABINGTON MA CAUL AY. 

they had read of men who exerted themselves in the cause of 
their country, with an energy unknown in latter times, who had 
violated the dearest of domestic charities, or voluntarily devoted 
themselves to death for the public good ; and they wondered at 
the degeneracy of their contemporaries. It never occurred to 
them, that the feelings which they so greatly admired, sprung 
-from local and occasional causes ; that they will always grow up 
spontaneously in small societies ; and that, in large empires, 
though they may be forced into existence for a short time by 
peculiar circumstances, they cannot be general or permanent. 
It is impossible that any man should feel for a fortress on a 
remote frontier, as he feels for his own house ; that he should 
grieve for a defeat in which ten thousand people whom he never 
saw have fallen, as he grieves for a defeat which has half un- 
peopled the street in which he lives ; that he should leave his 
home for a military expedition, in order to preserve the balance 
of power, as cheerfully as he would leave it to repel invaders 
who had begun to burn all the cornfields in his neighborhood. 

The writers of whom we speak should have considered this. 
They should have considered, that in patriotism, such as it existed 
amongst the Greeks, there was nothing essentially and eternally 
good ; that an exclusive attachment to a particular society, though 
a natural, and, under certain restrictions, a most useful sentiment, 
implies no extraordinary attainments in wusdom or virtue ; that 
where it has existed in an intense degree, it has turned states 
into gangs of robbers, whom their mutual fidelity has rendered 
more dangerous, has given a character of peculiar atrocity to 
war, and has generated that worst of all political evils, the 
tyranny of nations over nations. 



HISTORY. 213 

Enthusiastically attached to the name of liberty, these histo- 
rians troubled themselves little about its definition. The Spar- 
tans, tormented by ten thousand absurd restraints, unable to 
please themselves in the choice of their wives, their suppers, or 
their company, compelled to assume a peculiar manner, and to 
talk in a peculiar style, gloried in their liberty. The aristocracy 
of Rome repeatedly made liberty a plea for cutting off the 
favorites of the people. In almost all the little commonwealths 
of antiquity, liberty was used as a pretext for measures directed 
against every thing which makes liberty valuable, for measures 
which stifled discussion, corrupted the administration of justice, 
and discouraged the accumulation of property. The writers, 
whose works we are considering, confounded the sound with the 
substance, and the means with the end. Their imaginations 
were inflamed by mystery. They conceived of liberty as monks 
conceive of love, as Cockneys conceive of the happiness and 
innocence of rural life, as novel-reading seamstresses conceive 
of Almack's and Grosvenor Square, accomplished Marquesses 
and handsome Colonels of the Guards, In the relation of 
events, and the delineation of characters, they have paid little 
attention to facts, to the costume of the times of which they 
pretend to treat, or to the general principles of human nature. 
They have been faithful only to their own puerile and extrava- 
gant doctrines. Generals and statesmen are metamorphosed 
into magnanimous coxcombs, from whose fulsome virtues we 
turn away with disgust. The fine sayings and exploits of their 
heroes remind us of the insufferable perfections of Sir Charles 
Grandison, and effect us with a nausea, similar to that which we 
feel when an actor, in one of Morton's or Kotzebue's plays, lays 



2 1 4 THOMAS BABING TON MA CA ULA Y. 

his hand on his heart, advances to the ground-Hghts, and mouths 
a moral sentence for the edification of the gods. 

These writers, men who knew not what it was to have a 
country, men who have never enjoyed political rights, brought 
into fashion an offensive cant about patriotism and zeal for free- 
dom. What the English Puritans did for the language of 
Christianity, what Scuderi did for the language of love, they did 
for the language of public spirit. By habitual exaggeration they 
made it mean. By monotonous emphasis they made it feeble. 
They abused it till it became scarcely possible to use it with 
effect. 

Their ordinary rules of morality are deduced from extreme 
cases. The common regimen which they prescribe for society, 
is made up of those desperate remedies which only its most 
desperate distempers require. They look with peculiar compla- 
cency on actions, which even those who approve them consider 
as exceptions to laws of almost universal application — which 
bear so close an affinity to the most atrocious crimes, that even 
where it may be unjust to censure them, it is unsafe to praise 
them. It is not strange, therefore, that some flagitious instances 
of perfidy and cruelty should have been passed unchallenged in 
such company, that grave moralists, with no personal interest at 
stake, should have extolled, in the highest terms, deeds of which 
the atrocity appalled even the infuriated factions in whose cause 
they were perpetrated. The part which Timoleon took in the 
assassination of his brother, shocked many of his own partisans. 
The recollection of it preyed long on his own mind. But it was 
reserved for historians who lived some centuries later to discover 
that his conduct was a glorious display of virtue, and to lament 



HISTORY. 215 

that, from the frailty of human nature, a man who could perform 
so great an exploit could repent of it. 

The writings of these men, and of their modern imitators, 
have produced effects which deserve some notice. The English 
have been so long accustomed to political speculation, and have 
enjoyed so large a measure of practical liberty, that such works 
have produced little effect on their minds. We have classical 
associations and great names of our own, which we can con- 
fidently oppose to the most splendid of ancient times. Senate 
has not to our ears a sound so venerable as Parliament. We 
respect the Great Charter more than the laws of Solon. The 
Capitol and the Forum impress us with less awe than our own 
Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey, the place where the 
great men of twenty generations have contended, the place 
where they sleep together ! The list of warriors and statesmen 
by whom our constitution vi^as founded or preserved, from De 
Monfort down to Fox, may well stand a comparison with the 
Fasti of Rome. The dying thanksgiving of Sydney is as noble 
as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove ; and 
we think with far less pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails, 
than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that 
the bitterness of death was past. Even those parts of our 
history, over which, on some accounts, v.e would gladly throw a 
veil, may be proudly opposed to those on which the moralists of 
antiquity loved most to dwell. The enemy of English liberty 
was not murdered by men whom he pardoned and loaded with 
benefits. He was not stabbed in the back by those who smiled 
and cringed before his face. He was vanquished on fields of 
stricken battle ; he was arraigned, sentenced, and executed in the 



2 1 6 THOMAS BA BING TON MA CA ULA V. 

face of heaven and earth. Our liberty is neither Greek nor 
Roman, but essentially English. It has a character of its own, 
— a character which has taken a tinge from the sentiments of 
the chivalrous ages, and which accords with the peculiarities of 
our manners and of our insular situation. It has a language, 
too, of its own, and a language singularly idiomatic, full of 
meaning to ourselves, scarcely intelligible to strangers. 

Here, therefore, the effect of books such as those which we 
have been considering, has been harmless. They have, indeed, 
given currency to many very erroneous opinions with respect to 
ancient history. They have heated the imaginations of boj^s. 
They have misled the judgment, and corrupted the taste, of 
some men of letters, such as Akenside and Sir William Jones. 
But on persons engaged in public affairs they have had very 
little influence. The foundations of our constitution were laid 
by men who knew nothing of the Greeks, but that they denied 
the orthodox procession, and cheated the Crusaders ; and noth- 
ing of Rome, but that the Pope lived there. Those who 
followed, contented themselves with improving on the original 
plan. They found models at home, and .therefore they did not 
look for them abroad. But when enlightened men on the 
Continent began to think about political reformation, having no 
patterns before their eyes in their domestic histor}', they naturally 
had recourse to those remains of antiquity, the study of which 
is considered throughout Europe as an important part of educa- 
tion. The historians of whom we have been speaking had been 
members of large communities, and subjects of absolute sover- 
eigns. Hence it is, as we have already said, that they commit 
such gross errors in speaking of the little publics of antiquity. 



HISTORY. 217 

Their works were now read in the spirit in which they had been 
written. They were read by men placed in circumstances closely 
resembling their own, unacquainted with the real nature of 
liberty, but inclined to believe every thing good which could be 
told respecting it. How powerfully these books impressed these 
speculative reformers, is well known to all who have paid any 
attention to the French literature of the last century. But, 
perhaps, the writer on whom they produced the greatest effect, 
was Vittoria Alfieri. In some of his plays, particularly in 
"Virginia," " Timoleon," and "Brutus the Younger," he has 
even caricatured the extravagance of his masters. 

It was not strange that the blind, thus led by the blind, 
should stumble. The transactions of the French Revolution, in 
some measure, took their character from these works. Without 
the assistance of these works, indeed, a revolution would have 
taken place, — a revolution productive of much good and much 
evil : tremendous, but short-lived evil ; dearly purchased, but 
durable good. But it would not have been exactly such a 
revolution. The style, the accessories, would have been in 
many respects different. There would have been less of bom- 
bast in language, less of affectation in manner, less of solemn 
trifling and ostentatious simplicity. The acts of legislative 
assemblies, and the correspondence of diplomatists, would not 
have been disgraced by rants worthy only of a college declama- 
tion. The government of a great and polished nation would 
not have rendered itself ridiculous, by attempting to revive the 
usages of a world which had long passed away, or rather of 
a world which had never existed except in the description of a 
fantastic school of writers. These second-hand imitations 



21 8 THOMAS BASING TON MAC AULA Y. 

resembled the originals about as much as the classical feast 
with which the Doctor in Peregrine Pickle turned the stomachs 
of all his guests, resembled one of the suppers of Lucullus in 
the Hall of Apollo. 

These were mere follies. But the spirit excited by these 
writers produced more serious effects. The greater part of 
the crimes which disgraced the revolution sprung indeed from 
the relaxation of law, from popular ignorance, from the remem- 
brance of past oppression, from the fear of foreign conquest, 
from rapacity, from ambition, from party-spirit. But many 
atrocious proceedings must, doubtless, be ascribed to heated 
imagination, to perverted principle, to a distaste for what was 
vulgar in morals, and a passion for what was startling and 
dubious. Mr, Burke has touched on this subject with great 
felicity of expression. " The gradation of their republic," says 
he, "is laid in moral paradoxes. All those instances to be 
found in history; whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public 
spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and 
from which affrighted nature recoils, are their chosen and almost 
sole examples, for the instruction of their youth." The evil, we 
believe, is to be directly ascribed to the influence of the histo- 
rians whom we have mentioned, and their modern imitators. 

Livy had some faults in common with these writers. But on 
the wliole he must be considered as forming a class by himself. 
No historian with whom we are acquainted has shown so com- 
plete an indifference to truth. He seems to have cared only 
about the picturesque effect of his book, and the honor of his 
country. On the other hand, we do not know, in the whole 
range of literature, an instance of a bad thing so well done. 



HISTORY, 219 

The painting of the narrative is beyond description vivid and 
graceful. The abundance of interesting sentiments and splen- 
did imagery in the speeches is almost miraculous. His mind is 
a soil which is never overteemed, a fountain which never seems 
to trickle. It pours forth profusely ; yet it gives no sign of 
exhaustion. It was probably to this exuberance of thought 
and language always fresh, always sweet, always pure, no sooner 
yielded than repaired, that the critics applied that expression 
which has been so much discussed, ladca uhcrtas. 

All the merits and all the defects of Livy take a coloring 
from the character of his nation. He was a writer peculiarly 
Roman ; the proud citizen of a commonwealth which had 
indeed lost the reality of liberty, but which still sacredly pre- 
served its forms — in fact, the subject of an arbitrary prince, 
but in his own estimation one of the masters of the world, with 
a hundred kings below him, and only the gods above him. He, 
therefore, looked back on former times with feelings far different 
from those which were naturally entertained by his Greek con- 
temporaries, and which at a later period became general among 
men of letters throughout the Roman Empire. He contem- 
plated the past with interest and delight, not because it furnished 
a contrast to the present, but because it had led to the present. 
He recurred to it, not to lose in proud recollections the sense of 
national degradation, but to trace the progress of national glory. 
It is true that his veneration for antiquity produced on him 
some of the effects which it produced on those who arrived at it 
by a very different road. He has something of their exaggera- 
tion, something of their cant, something of their fondness for 
anomalies and lusus naturce in morality. Yet even here we 



220 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

perceive a difference. They talk rapturously of patriotism and 
liberty in the abstract. He does not seem to think any country 
but Rome deserving of love : nor is it for liberty as liberty, but 
for liberty as a part of the Roman institutions, that he is 
zealous. 

Of the concise and elegant accounts of the campaigns of 
Caesar little can be said. They are incomparable models for 
military despatches. But histories they are not, and do not pre- 
tend to be. 

The ancient critics placed Sallust in the same rank with Livy ; 
and unquestionably the small portion of his works which has 
come down to us is calculated to give a high opinion of his 
talents. But his style is not very pleasant, and his most power- 
ful work, the account of the Conspiracy of Catiline, has rather 
the air of a clever party pamphlet than that of a history. It 
abounds with strange inconsistencies, which, unexplained as they 
are, necessarily excite doubts as to the fairness of the narrative. 
It is true, that many circumstances now forgotten may have been 
familiar to his contemporaries, and may have rendered passages 
clear to them which to us appear dubious and perplexing. But 
a great historian should remember that he writes for distant 
generations, for men who will preserve the apparent contradic- 
tions, and will possess no means of reconciling them. We can 
only vindicate the fidelity of Sallust at the expense of his skill. 
But, in fact, all the information which we have from contempo- 
raries, respecting this famous plot is liable to the same objection, 
and is read by discerning men with the same incredulity. It is 
all on one side. No answer has reached our times. Yet, on 
the showing of the accusers, the accused seem entitled to 



HISTORY. 221 

acquittal. Catiline, we are told, intrigued with a Vestal virgin, 
and murdered his own son. His house was a den of gamblers 
and debauchees. No young man could cross his threshold 
without danger to his fortune and reputation. Yet this is the 
man with whom Cicero was willing to coalesce in a contest for 
the first magistracy of the republic ; and whom he described 
long after the fatal termination of the conspiracy, as an accom- 
plished hypocrite, by whom he had himself been deceived, 
and who had acted with consummate skill the character of a 
good citizen and a good friend. We are told that the plot was 
the most wicked and desperate ever known, and, almost in the 
same breath, that the great body of the people, and many of the 
nobles, favored it ; that the richest citizens of Rome were eager 
for the spoliation of all property, and its highest functionaries 
for the destruction of all order; that Crassus, Caesar, the Praetor 
Lentulus, one of the consuls of the year, one of the consuls 
elect, were proved or suspected to be engaged in a scheme for 
subverting institutions to which they owed the highest honors, 
and introducing universal anarchy. We are told, that a govern- 
ment which knew all this suffered the conspirator, whose rank, 
talents, and courage rendered him most dangerous, to quit Rome 
without molestation. We are told, that bondmen and gladiators 
were to be armed against the citizens. Yet we find that Catiline 
rejected the slaves who crowded to enlist in his army, lest, as 
Sallust himself expresses it, " he should seem to identify their 
cause with that of the citizens." Finally, we are told that the 
niagistrate, who was universally allowed to have saved all classes 
of his countrymen from conflagration and massacre, rendered 
himself so unpopular by his conduct, that a marked insult was 



222 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

offered to him at the expiration of his office, and a severe pun- 
ishment inflicted on him shortly after. 

Sallust tells us what, indeed, the letters and speeches of 
Cicero sufficiently prove, that some persons considered the 
shocking and atrocious parts of the plot as mere inventions of 
the government, designed to excuse its unconstitutional meas- 
ures. We must confess ourselves to be of that opinion. There 
was, undoubtedly, a strong party desirous to change the admin- 
istration. While Pompey held the command of an army, they 
could not effect their purpose without preparing means for 
repelling force, if necessary, by force. In all this there is noth- 
ing different from the ordinary practice of Roman factions. 
The other charges brought against the conspirators are so incon- 
sistent and improbable, that we give no credit whatever to 
them. If our readers think this scepticism unreasonable, let 
them turn to the contemporary accounts of the Popish Plot. 
Let them look over the votes of Parliament, and the speeches 
of the King ; the charges of Scroggs, and the harangues of the 
managers employed against Strafford. A person who should 
form his judgment from these pieces alone, would believe that 
London was set on fire by the Papists, and that Sir Edmondbury 
Godfrey was murdered for his religion. Yet these stories are 
now altogether exploded. They have been abandoned by 
statesjnen to aldermen, by aldermen to clergymen, by clergymen 
to old women, and by old women to Sir Harcourt Lees. 

Of the great Latin historians, Tacitus was certainly the great- 
est. His style, indeed, is not only faulty in itself, but is, in some 
respects, peculiarly unfit for historical composition. He carries 
his love of effect far beyond the limits of moderation. He tells 



HISTORY. . 223 

a fine story finely ; but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He 
stimulates till stimulants lose their power. Thucydides, as we 
have already observed, relates ordinary transactions with the 
unpretending clearness and succinctness of a gazette. His 
great powers of painting he reserves for events, of which the 
slightest details are interesting. The simplicity of the setting 
gives additional lustre to the brilliants. There are passages in 
the narrative of Tacitus superior to the best which can be quoted 
from Thucydides. But they are not enchased and relieved with 
the same skill. They are far more striking when extracted from 
the body of the w-ork to which they belong, than when they 
occur in their place, and are read in connection with what pre- 
cedes and follows. ' 

In the delineation of character, Tacitus is unrivalled among 
historians, and has very few superiors among dramatists and 
novelists. By the delineation of character, we do not mean the 
practice of drawing up epigrammatic catalogues of good and 
bad qualities, and appending them to the names of eminent 
men. No writer, indeed, has done this more skilfully than Taci- 
tus : but this is not his peculiar glory. All the persons who 
occupy a large space in his works have an individuality of char- 
acter which seems to pervade all their words and actions. We 
know them as if we had lived with them. Claudius, Nero, Otho, 
both the Agrippinas, are master-pieces. But Tiberius is a still 
higher miracle of art. The historian undertook to make us 
intimately acquainted with a man singularly dark and inscruta- 
ble, — with a man whose real disposition long remained swathed 
up in intricate folds of factitious virtues ; and over w^hose actions 
the hypocrisy of his youth, and the seclusion of his old age, 



224 THOMAS BASING TON MA CA ULA Y. 

threw a singular mystery. He was to exhibit the specious quali- 
ties of the tyrant in a light which might render them trans- 
parent, and enable us at once to perceive the covering and the 
vices which it concealed. He was to trace the gradations by 
which the first magistrate of a republic, a senator mingling 
freely in debate, a noble associating with his brother nobles, was 
transformed into an Asiatic sultan ; he was to exhibit a char- 
acter distinguished by courage, self-command, and profound 
policy, yet defiled by all 

" th ' extravagancy, 
And crazy ribaldry of fancy." 

He was to mark the gradual effect of advancing age and 
approaching death on this strange compound of strength and 
weakness ; to exhibit the old sovereign of the world sinking into 
a dotage which, though it rendered his appetites eccentric, and 
his temper savage, never impaired the powers of his stern and 
penetrating mind — conscious of failing strength, raging with 
capricious sensuality, yet to the last the keenest of observers, 
the most artful of dissemblers, and the most terrible of masters. 
The task was one of extreme difficulty. The execution is almost 
perfect. 

The talent which is required to write history thus, bears a 
considerable affinity to the talent of a great dramatist. There 
is one obvious distinction. The dramatist creates, the historian 
only disposes. The difference is not in the mode of execution, 
but in the mode of conception. Shakespeare is guided by a 
model which exists in his imagination ;. Tacitus, by a model 
furnished from without. Hamlet is to Tiberius what the Laoc- 
oon is to the Ne^\ton of Roubilliac. 



HISTORY. 225 

In this part of his art Tacitus certainly had neither equal nor 
second among the ancient historians. Herodotus, though he 
wrote in a dramatic form, had Httle of dramatic genius. The 
frequent dialogues which he introduces give vivacity and move- 
ment to the narrative ; but are not strikingly characteristic. 
Xenophon is fond of telling his readers, at considerable length, 
what he thought of the persons whose adventures he relates. 
But he does not show them the men, and enable them to judge 
for themselves. The heroes of Livy are the most insipid of 
all beings, real or imaginary, the heroes of Plutarch always ex- 
cepted. Indeed, the manner of Plutarch in this respect reminds 
us of the cookery of those continental inns, the horror of 
English travellers, in which a certain nondescript broth is kept 
constantly boiling, and copiously poured, without distinction, 
over every dish as it comes up to table. Thucydides, though at 
a wide interval, comes next to Tacitus. His Pericles, his Nicias, 
his Cleon, his Brasidas, are happily discriminated. The lines 
are few, the coloring faint ; but the general air and expression 
are caught. 

We begin, like the priest in Don Quixote's library, to be tired 
with taking down books one after another for separate judgment, 
and feel inclined to pass sentence on them in masses. We shall, 
therefore, instead of pointing out the defects and merits of the 
different modern historians, state generally in what particulars 
they have surpassed their predecessors, and in what we conceive 
them to have failed. 

*rhey have certainly been, in one sense, far more strict in their 
adherence to truth, than most of the Greek and Roman writers. 
They do not think themselves entitled to render their narrative 



226 THOMAS BABINGTON MA CAUL AY. 

interesting by introducing descriptions, conversations and ha- 
rangues, which have no existence but in their own imagination. 
This improvement was gradually introduced. History com- 
menced among the modern nations of Europe, as it had com- 
menced among the Greeks, in romance. Froissart was our 
Herodotus. Italy was to Europe what Athens was to Greece. 
In Italy, therefore, a more accurate and manly mode of narration 
was early introduced. Machiavelli and Guicciardini, in imitation 
of Livy and Thucydides, composed speeches for their historical 
personages. But as the classical enthusiasm which distinguished 
the age of Lorenzo and Leo gradually subsided, this absurd 
practice was abandoned. In France, we fear, it still, in some 
degree, keeps its ground. In our own country, a writer who 
should venture on it would be laughed to scorn. Whether the 
historians of the last two centuries tell more truth than those of 
antiquity, may perhaps be doubted. But it is quite certain that 
they tell fewer falsehoods. 

In the philosophy of history, the moderns have very far 
surpassed the ancients. It is not, indeed, strange that the 
Greeks and Romans should not have carried the science of 
government, or any other experimental science, so far as it has 
been carried in our time; for the experimental sciences are 
generally in a state of progression. They were better under- 
stood in the seventeenth century than in the sixteenth, and in 
the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth. But this con- 
stant improvement, this natural growth of knowledge, will not 
altogether account for the immense superiority of the modern 
writers. The difference is a difference noi, in degree but of 
kind. It is not merely that new principles have been discov- 



HISTORY. 227 

ered, but that new faculties seem to be exerted. It is not that 
at one time the human intellect should have made but small 
progress, and at another time have advanced far ; but that at 
one time it should have been stationary, and at another time 
constantly proceeding. In taste and imagination, in the graces 
of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public 
works, the ancients were at least our equals. They reasoned as 
justly as ourselves on subjects which required pure demon- 
stration. But in the moral sciences they made scarcely any 
advance. During the long period which elapsed between the 
fifth century before the Christian era, and the fifth century after 
it, little perceptible progress was made. All the metaphysical 
discoveries of all the philosophers, from the time of Socrates to 
the northern invasion, are not to be compared in importance 
with those which have been made in England every fifty years 
since the time of Elizabeth. There is not the least reason to 
believe that the principles of government, legislation, and politi- 
cal economy were better understood in the time of Augustus 
Caesar, than in the time of Pericles. In our own country, the 
sound doctrines of trade and jurisprudence have been, within 
the lifetime of a single generation, dimly hinted, boldly pro- 
pounded, defended, systematized, adopted by all reflecting men 
of all parties, quoted in legislative assemblies, incorporated into 
laws and treaties. 

To what is this change to be attributed ? Partly, no doubt, to 
the discovery of printing, a discovery which has not only 
diffused knowledge widely, but, as we have already observed, 
has also introduced into reasoning a precision unknown in 
those ancient communities, in which information was for the 



228 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY. 

most part conveyed orally. There was, we suspect, another 
cause, less obvious, but still more powerful. 

The spirit of the two most famous nations of antiquity was 
remarkably exclusive. In the time of Homer, the Greeks had 
not begun to consider themselves as a distinct race. They still 
looked with something of childish wonder and awe on the 
riches and wisdom of Sidon and Egypt. From what causes, 
and by what gradations, their feelings underwent a change, it is 
not easy to determine. Their history from the Trojan to the 
Persian war, is covered with an obscurity broken only by dim 
and scattered gleams of truth. But it is certain that a great 
alteration took place. They regarded themselves as a separate 
people. They had common religious rites, and common princi- 
ples of public law, in which foreigners had no part. In all their 
political systems, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical, 
there was a strong family likeness. After the retreat of Xerxes 
and the fall of Mardonius, national pride rendered the separation 
between the Greeks and the barbarians complete. The conquer- 
ors considered themselves men of a superior breed, men who, in 
their intercourse with neighboring nations, were to teach, and 
not to learn. They looked for nothing out of themselves. They 
borrowed nothing. They translated nothing. We cannot call 
to mind a single expression of any Greek writer earlier than 
the age of Augustus, indicating an opinion, that anything worth 
reading could be written in any language except his own. The 
feelings which sprung from national glory were not altogether 
extinguished by national degradation. They were fondly cher- 
ished through ages of slavery and shame. The literature of 
Rome herself was regarded with contempt by those who had 



HISTORY. 



229 



fled before her arms, and who bowed beneath her fasces. Vol- 
taire says, in one of his six thousand pamphlets, that he was the 
first person who told the French that England had produced 
eminent men besides the Duke of Marlborough. Down to a 
very late period the Greeks seem to have stood in need of 
similar information with respect to their masters. With Paulus 
v^milius, Sylla, and Csesar they were well acquainted. But the 
notions which they entertained respecting Cicero and Virgil 
were, probably, not unlike those which Boileau may have 
formed about Shakespeare. Dionysius lived in the most splen- 
did age of Latin poetry and eloquence. He was a critic, and, 
after the manner of his age, an able critic. He studied the 
language of Rome, associated with its learned men, and com- 
piled its history. Yet he seems to have thought its literature 
valuable only for the purpose of illustrating its antiquities. His 
reading appears to have been confined to its public records, and 
to a few old annalists. Once and but once, if we remember 
rightly, he quotes Ennius, to solve a question of Etymology. 
He has written much on the art of oratory : yet he has not men- 
tioned the name of Cicero. 

The Romans submitted to the pretensions of a race which 
they despised. Their epic poet, while he claimed for them pre- 
eminence in the arts of government and war, acknowledged 
their inferiority in taste, eloquence, and science. Men of letters 
affected to understand the Greek language better than their 
own. Pomponius preferred the honor of becoming an Athenian, 
by intellectual naturalization, to all the distinctions which were 
to be acquired in the political contests of Rome. His great 
friend composed Greek poems and memoirs. It is well known 



230 THOMAS BASING TON MA CA ULA V. 

that Petrarch considered that beautiful language in which his 
sonnets are written, as a barbarous jargon, and entrusted his 
fame to those wretched Latin hexameters, M'hich, during the 
last four centuries, have scarcely found four readers. Many 
eminent Romans appear to have felt the same contempt for 
their native tongue as compared with the Greek. The preju- 
dice continued to a very late period. Julian was as partial to 
the Greek language as Frederic the Great to the French ; and it 
seems that he could not express himself with elegance in the 
dialect of the state which he ruled. 

Even those Latin writers who did not carry this affectation so 
far, looked on Greece as the only fount of knowledge. From 
Greece they derived the measures of their poetry, and indeed, 
all of poetry that can be imported. From Greece they bor- 
rowed the principles and the vocabulary of their philosophy. 
To the literature of other nations they do not seem to have paid 
the slightest attention. The sacred books of the Hebrews, for 
example, books which, considered merely as human composi- 
tions, are invaluable, to the critic, the antiquarian, and the 
philosopher, seem to have been utterly unnoticed by them. The 
peculiarities of Judaism, and the rapid growth of Christianity, 
attracted their notice. They made war against the Jews. They 
made laws against the Christians. But they never opened the 
books" of Moses. Juvenal quotes the Pentateuch with censure. 
The author of the treatise on " the Sublime " quotes it with 
praise : but both of them quote it erroneously. When we 
consider what sublime poetry, what curious history, what striking 
and peculiar views of the Divine nature, and of the social duties 
of men, are to be found in the Jewish scriptures ; when we 



HISTORY. 231 

consider that two sects on which the attention of the govern- 
ment was constantly fixed, appealed to those scriptures as the 
rule of their faith and practice, this indifference is astonishing. 
The fact seems to be, that the Greeks admired only themselves, 
and that the Romans admired only themselves and the Greeks. 
Literary men turned away with disgust from modes of thought 
and expression so widely different from all that they had been 
accustomed to admire. The effect was narrowness and same- 
ness of thought. Their minds, if we may so express ourselves, 
bred in and in, and were accordingly cursed with barrenness, and 
degeneracy. No extraneous beauty or vigor was engrafted on 
the decaying stock. By an exclusive attention to one class of 
phenomena, by an exclusive taste for one species of excellence, 
the human intellect was stunted. Occasional coincidences were 
turned into general rules. Prejudices were confounded with 
instincts. On man, as he was found in a particular state of 
society — on government, as it had existed in a particular 
corner of the world, many just observations were made ; but of 
man as man, or government as government, little was known. 
Philosophy remained stationary. Slight changes, sometimes for 
the worse and sometimes for the better, were made in the super- 
structure. But nobody thought of examining the foundations. 

The vast despotism of the Caesars, gradually effacing all 
national peculiarities, and assimilating the remotest provinces 
of the Empire to each other, augmented the evil. At the 
close of the third century after Christ the prospects of mankind 
were fearfully dreary. A system of etiquette, as pampously 
frivolous as that of the Escurial, had been established. A 
sovereign almost invisible ; a crowd of dignitaries minutely 



232 THOMAS BASING TON MA CA ULA V. 

distinguished by badges and titles ; rhetoricians who said noth- 
ing but what had been said ten thousand times ; schools in 
which nothing was taught but what had been known for ages, — 
such was the machinery provided for the government and in- 
struction of the most enlightened part of the human race. That 
great community was then in danger of experiencing a calamity 
far more terrible than any of the quick, inflammatory, destroying 
maladies, to which nations are liable, — a tottering, drivelling, 
paralytic longevity, the immortality of the Struldbrugs, a Chinese 
civilization. It would be easy to indicate many points of 
resemblance between the subjects of Diocletian and the people 
of that Celestial Empire where, during many centuries, nothing 
has been learned or unlearned ; where government, where edu- 
cation, where the whole system of life is a ceremony ; where 
knowledge forgets to increase and multiply, and, like the talent 
buried in the earth, or the pound wrapped up in the napkin, 
experiences neither waste nor augmentation. 

The torpor was broken by two great revolutions : the one 
moral, the other political ; the one from within, the other from 
without. The victory of Christianity over Paganism, considered 
with relation to this subject only, was of great importance. It 
overthrew the old system of morals ; and with it much of the 
old system of metaphysics. It furnished the orator with new 
topics' of declamation, and the logician with new points of 
controversy. Above all, it introduced a new principle, of which 
the operation was constantly felt in every part of society. It 
stirred the stagnant mass from the inmost depths. It excited 
all the passions of a stormy democracy in the quiet and listless 
population of an overgrown empire. The fear of heresy did 



HISTORY. 



233 



what the sense of oppression could not do : it changed men, 
accustomed to be turned over lil<e sheep from tyrant to tyrant, 
into devoted partizans and obstinate rebels. The tones of an 
eloquence which had been silent for ages, resounded from the 
pulpit of Gregory. A spirit which had been extinguished on 
the plains of Philippi, revived in Athanasius and Ambrose. 

Yet even this remedy was not sufficiently violent for the 
disease. It did not prevent the empire of Constantinople from 
relapsing, after a short paroxysm of excitement, into a state of 
stupefaction, to which history furnishes scarcely any parallel. 
We there find that a polished society, a society in which a most 
intricate and elaborate system of jurisprudence was established, 
in which the arts of luxury were well understood, in which the 
works of the great ancient writers were preserved and studied, 
existed for nearly a thousand years without making one great 
discovery in science, or producing one book which is read by 
any but curious inquirers. There were tumults, too, and contro- 
versies, and wars, in abundance : and these things, bad as they 
are in themselves, have generally been favorable to the progress 
of the intellect. But here they tormented without stimulating. 
The waters were troubled, but no healing influence descended. 
The agitations resembled the grinnings and writhings of a 
galvanized corpse, not the struggles of an athletic man. 

From this miserable state the Western Empire was saved by 
the fiercest and most destroying visitation with which God has 
ever chastened his creatures — the invasion of the Northern 
nations. Such a cure was required for such a distemper. The 
Fire of London, it has been observed, was a blessing. It burned 
down the city, but it burned out the plague. The same may be 



234 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

said of the tremendous devastations of the Roman dominions. 
It annihilated the noisome recesses in which lurked the seeds of 
great moral maladies ; it cleared an atmosphere fatal to the 
health and vigor of the human mind. It cost Europe a thousand 
years of barbarism to escape the fate of China, 

At length the terrible purification was accomplished ; and the 
second civilization of mankind commenced, under the circum- 
stances which afforded a strong security that it would never 
retrograde and never pause. Europe was now a great federal 
community : her numerous states were united by the easy ties of 
international law and a common religion. Their institutions, 
their languages, their manners, their tastes in literature, their 
modes of education, were widely different. Their connection 
was close enough to allow of mutual observation and improve- 
ment, yet not so close as to destroy the idioms of national 
opinion and feeling. 

The balance of moral and intellectual influence thus estab- 
lished between the nations of Europe, is far more important 
than the balance of political power. Indeed, we are inclined to 
think that the latter is valuable principally because it tends to 
maintain the former. The civilized world has thus been pre- 
served from a uniformity of character fatal to all improvement. 
Every part of it has been illuminated with light reflected from 
ever)? other. Competition has produced activity where monopoly 
would have produced sluggishness. The number of experiments 
in moral science which the speculator has an opportunity of 
witnessing, has been increased beyond all calculation. Society 
and human nature, instead of being seen in a single point of 
view, are presented to him under ten thousand different aspects. 



HISTORY. 235 

By observing the manners of surrounding nations, by studying 
their literature, by comparing it with that of his own country 
and of the ancient republics, he is enabled to correct those 
errors into which the most acute men must fall when they reason 
from a single species to a genus. He learns to distinguish what 
is local from what is universal ; what is transitory from what is 
eternal ; to discriminate between exceptions and rules ; to trace 
the operation of disturbing causes ; to separate those general 
principles, which are always true and everywhere applicable, 
from the accidental circumstances with which, in every commu- 
nity, they are blended, and with which, in an isolated community, 
they are confounded by the most philosophical mind. 

Hence it is, that, in generalization, the writers of modern 
times have far surpassed those of antiquity. The historians of 
our own country are unequalled in depth and precision of rea- 
son ; and even in the works of our mere compilers, we often 
meet with speculations beyond the reach of Thucydides or 
Tacitus. 

But it must, at the same time, be admitted that they have 
characteristic faults, so closely connected with their character- 
istic merits, and of such magnitude, that it may well be doubted 
whether, on the whole, this department of literature has gained 
or lost during the last two-and-twenty centuries. 

The best historians of later times have been seduced from 
truth, not by their imagination, but by their reason. They far 
excel their predecessors in the art of deducing general principles 
from facts. But unhappily they have fallen into the error of 
distorting facts to suit general principles. They arrive at a 
theory from looking at some of the phenomena, and the remain- 



236 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

ing phenomena they strain or curtail to suit the theory. For 
this purpose it is not necessary that they should assert what is 
absolutely false, for all questions in morals and politics are 
questions of comparison and degree. Any proposition which 
does not involve a contradiction in terms, may, by possibility, be 
true ; and if all the circumstances which raise a probability in 
its favor be stated and enforced, and those which lead to an 
opposite conclusion be omitted or lightly passed over, it may 
appear to be demonstrated. In every human character and 
transaction there is a mixture of good and evil — a little exag- 
geration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a 
watchful and searching scepticism with respect to the evidence 
on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report 
or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a 
tyrant of Henry the Fourth. 

This species of misrepresentation abounds in the most valu- 
able works of modern historians. Herodotus tells his story like 
a slovenly witness, who, heated by partialities and prejudices, 
unacquainted with the established rules of evidence, and unin- 
structed as to the obligations of his oath, confounds what he 
imagines with what he has seen and heard, and brings out facts, 
reports, conjectures, and fancies, in one mass. Hume is an 
accomplished advocate : without positively asserting much more 
than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circumstances 
which support his case ; he glides lightly over those which are 
unfavorable to it ; his own witnesses are applauded and encour- 
aged ; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are 
controverted ; the contradictions into which they fall are ex- 
plained away ; a clear and connected abstract of their evidence 



HISTORY. 



237 



is given. Every thing that is offered on the other side is scruti- 
nized with the utmost severity ; — every suspicious circumstance 
is a ground for comment and invective ; what cannot be denied 
is extenuated, or passed by without notice ; concessions even 
are sometimes made — but this insidious candor only increases 
the effect of the vast mass of sophistry. 

We have mentioned Hume, as the ablest and most popular 
writer of his class ; but the charge which we have brought 
against him is one to which all our most distinguished historians 
are in some degree obnoxious. Gibbon, in particular, deserves 
very severe censure. Of all the numerous culprits, however, 
none is more deeply guilty than Mr. Mitford, We willingly 
acknowledge the obligations which are due to his talents and 
industry. The modern historians of Greece had been in the 
habit of writing as if the world had learned nothing new during 
the last sixteen hundred years. Instead of illustrating the 
events which they narrated, by the philosophy of a more enlight- 
ened age, they judged of antiquity by itself alone. They seemed 
to think that notions, long driven from every other corner of 
literature, had a prescriptive right to occupy this last fastness. 
They considered all the ancient historians as equally authentic. 
They scarcely made any distinction between him who related 
events at which he had himself been present, and him who five 
hundred years after composed a philosophic romance for a soci- 
ety which had in the interval undergone a complete change. It 
was all Greek, and all true ! The centuries which separated 
Plutarch from Thucydides seemed as nothing to men who lived 
in an age so remote. The distance of time produced an error 
similar to that which is sometimes produced by distance of 



238 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

place. There are many good ladies who think that all the 
people in India live together, and who charge a friend setting 
out for Calcutta with kind messages to Bombay, To Rollin and 
Barthelemi, in the same manner, all the classics were contem- 
poraries. 

Mr. Mitford certainly introduced great improvements ; he 
showed us that men who wrote in Greek and Latin sometimes 
told lies ; he showed us that ancient history might be related in 
such a manner as to furnish not only allusions to school-boys, 
but important lessons to statesmen. From that love of theat- 
rical effect and high-flown sentiment which had poisoned almost 
every other work on the same subject, his book is perfectly free. 
But his passion for a theory as false, and far more ungenerous, 
led him substantially to violate truth in every page. Statements 
unfavorable to democracy are made with unhesitating confi- 
dence, and with the utmost bitterness of language. Every charge 
brought against a monarch, or an aristocracy, is sifted with the 
utmost care. If it cannot be denied, some palliating suppo- 
sition is suggested, or we are at least reminded that some 
circumstances now unknown may have justified what at present 
appears unjustifiable. Two events are reported by the same 
author in the same sentence ; their truth rests on the same tes- 
timony ; but the one supports the darling hyjDothesis, and the 
other seems inconsistent with it. The one is taken and the 
other is left. 

The practice of distorting narrative into a conformity with 
theory, is a vice not so unfavorable as at first sight it may 
appear, to the interests of political science. We have com- 
pared the writers who indulge in it to advocates ; and we may 



HISTORY. 239 

add, that their conflicting fallacies, like those of advocates, 
correct each other. It has always been held, in the most 
enlightened nations, that a tribunal will decide a judicial ques- 
tion most fairly, when it has heard two able men argue, as 
unfairly as possible, on the two opposite sides of it ; and we are 
inclined to think that this opinion is just. Sometimes, it is true, 
superior eloquence and dexterity will make the worse appear 
the better reason ; but it is at least certain that the judge will 
be compelled to contemplate the case under two different 
aspects. It is certain that no important consideration will 
altogether escape notice. 

This is at present the state of history. The Poet-laureate 
appears for the Church of England, Lingard for the Church of 
Rome. Brodie has moved to set aside the verdicts obtained by 
Hume ; and the cause in which Mitford succeeded, is, we 
understand, about to be reheard. In the midst of these dis- 
putes, however, history proper, if we may use the term, is 
disappearing. The high, grave, impartial summing up of Thu- 
cydides is nowhere to be found. 

While our historians are practising all the arts of controversy, 
they miserably neglect the art of narration, the art of interesting 
the affections, and presenting pictures to the imagination. 
That a writer may produce these effects without violating truth, 
is sufficiently proved by many excellent biographical works. 
The immense popularity which well-written books of this kind 
have acquired, deserves the serious consideration of historians. 
Voltaire's " Charles the Twelfth," Marmontel's " Memoirs," Bos- 
well's "Life of Johnson," Southey's account of Nelson, are 
perused with delight by the most frivolous and indolent. 



240 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

Whenever any tolerable book of the same description makes its 
appearance, the circulating libraries are mobbed ; the book 
societies are in commotion ; the new novel lies uncut ; the 
magazines and newspapers fill their columns with extracts. In 
the meantime histories of great empires, written by men of 
eminent ability, lie unread on the shelves of ostentatious libra- 
ries. 

The writers of history seem to entertain an aristocratical 
contempt for the writers of memoirs. They think it beneath 
the dignity of men who describe the revolutions of nations, to 
dwell on the details which constitute the charm of biography. 
They have imposed on themselves a code of conventional 
decencies, as absurd as that which has been the bane of the 
French drama. The most characteristic and interesting circum- 
stances are omitted or softened down, because, as j\'e are told, 
they are too trivial for the majesty of history. The majesty of 
history seems to resemble the majesty of the poor King of 
Spain, who died a martyr to ceremony, because the proper dig- 
nitaries were not at hand to render him assistance. 

That history would be more amusing if this edquette were 
relaxed, will, we suppose, be acknowledged. But would it be 
less dignified, or less useful ? What do we mean, when we say 
that one past event is important, and another insignificant? No 
past event has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge of it 
is valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations with 
respect to the future. A history which does not serve this 
purpose, though it may be filled with battles, treaties, and "com- 
motions, is as useless as the series of turnpike-tickets collected 
by Sir Matthew Mite. 



HISTORY. 241 

Let us suppose that Lord Clarendon, instead of filling hun- 
dreds of folio pages with copies of state papers, in which the 
same assertions and contradictions are repeated, till the reader 
is overpowered with weariness, had condescended to be the 
Boswell of the Long Parliament. Let us suppose that he had 
exhibited to us the wise and lofty self-government of Hampden, 
leading while he seemed to follow, and propounding unanswer- 
able arguments in the strongest forms, with the modest air of an 
inquirer anxious for information ; the delusions which misled 
the noble spirit of Vane ; the coarse fanaticism which concealed 
the yet loftier genius of Cromwell, destined to control a muti- 
nous army and a factious people, to abase the flag of Holland, to 
arrest the victorious arms of Sweden, and to hold the balance 
firm between the rival monarchies of France and Spain. Let 
us suppose that he had made his Cavaliers and Roundheads 
talk in their own style ; that he had reported some of the 
ribaldry of Rupert's pages, and some of the cant of Harrison 
and Fleetwood. Would not his work in that case have been 
more interesting ? Would it not have been more accurate ? 

A history in which every particular incident may be true, 
may on the whole be false. The circumstances which have 
most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of 
manners and morals, the transition of communities from poverty 
to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to 
humanity, — these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions. 
Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased 
to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or 
enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties, and 
recorded in no archives. They are carried on in every school, 



242 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

in every church, behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand 
firesides. The upper-current of society presents no certain crite- 
rion by whicli we can judge of the direction in which the under- 
current flows. We read of defeats and victories. But we know 
that nations may be miserable amidst victories, and prosperous 
amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise ministers, and of 
the rise of profligate favorites. But we must remember how 
small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single states- 
man can bear to the good or evil of a great social system. 

Bishop Watson comjDares a geologist to a gnat mounted on an 
elephant, and laying down theories as to the whole internal 
structure of the vast animal, from the phenomena of the hide. 
The comparison is unjust to the geologists ; but it is very appli- 
cable to those historians who write as if the body politic were 
homogeneous, who look only on the surface of affairs, and never 
think of the mighty and various organization which lies deep 
below. 

In the works of such writers as these, England, at the close 
of the Seven Years' War, is in the highest state of prosperity. 
At the close of the American war she is in a miserable and 
degraded condition ; as if the people were not on the whole as 
rich, as well governed, and as well educated, at the latter period 
as at the former. We have read books called Histories of 
England, under the reign of George the Second, in which the 
rise of Methodism is not even mentioned. A hundred years 
hence this breed of authors will, we hope, be extinct. If it 
should still exist, the late ministerial interregnum will be de- 
scribed in terms which will seem to imply that all government 
was at an end ; that the social contract was annulled, and that 



HISTORY. 243 

the hand of every man was against his neighbor, until the wisdom 
and virtue of the new Cabinet educed order out of the chaos of 
anarchy. We are quite certain that misconceptions as gross, 
prevail at this moment, respecting many important parts of our 
annals. 

The effect of historical reading is analogous, in many respects, 
to that produced by foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, 
is transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions. 
He hears new modes of expression. His mind is enlarged by 
contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of 
manners. But men may travel far, and return with minds as 
contracted as if they had never stirred from their own market- 
town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of many 
battles, and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be 
no wiser. Most people look at past times, as princes look at 
foreign countries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed 
on our island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the 
king, has hunted with the master of the stag-hounds, has seen 
the Guards reviewed, and a knight of the garter installed ; has 
cantered along Regent Street ; has visited St. Paul's, and noted 
down its dimensions, and has then departed, thinking that he 
has seen England. He has, in fact, seen a few public buildings, 
public men, and public ceremonies. But of the vast and complex 
system of society, of the fine shades of national character, of the 
practical operation of government and laws, he knows nothing. 
He who would understand these things rightly, must not confine 
his observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see 
ordinary men as they appear in their ordinary business and in 
their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in the crowds of the 



244 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC A UL AY. 

exchange and the coffee-house. He must obtain admittance to 
the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He must bear with 
vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from exploring even 
the retreats of misery. He who wishes to understand the con- 
dition of mankind in former ages, must proceed on the same 
principle. If he attends, only to public transactions, to wars, 
congresses, and debates, his studies will be as unprofitable as 
the travels of those imperial, royal, and serene sovereigns, who 
form their judgment of our island from having gone in state to 
a few fine sights, and from having held formal conference with 
a few great officers. 

The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and 
spirit of an age are exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, 
he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not au- 
thenticated by suiiicient testimony. But by judicious selection, 
rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions 
which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative a due 
subordination is observed ; some transactions are prominent, 
others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is 
increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the 
persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which 
they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man. 
He shows us the court, the camp, and the senate. But he 
sho^^s us also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no pecu- 
liarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant for his 
notice, which is not too insignificant to illustrate the operation 
of laws, of religion, and of education, and to mark the progress 
of the human mind. Men will not merely be described, but will 
be made intimately known to us. The changes of manners will 



HISTORY. 



245 



be indicated, not merely by a few general phrases, or a few 
extracts from statistical documents, but by appropriate images 
presented in every line. 

If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history 
of England, he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, 
the negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial changes. But 
with these he would intersperse the details which are the charm 
of historical romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beauti- 
ful painted window, which was made by an apprentice out of 
the pieces of glass which had been rejected by his master. It 
is so far superior to every other in the church, that, according 
to the tradition, the vanquished artist killed himself from morti- 
fication. Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those 
fragments of truth which historians have scornfully thrown 
behind them, in a manner which may well excite their envy. 
He has constructed out of their gleanings works which, even 
considered as histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. 
But a truly great historian would reclaim those materials which 
the novelist has appropriated. The history of the government, 
and the history of the people, would be exhibited in that mode 
in which alone they can be exhibited justly, in inseparable con- 
junction and intermixture. We should not then have to look 
for the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for 
their phraseology in " Old Mortality ; " for one half of King 
James in Hume, and for the other half in the " Fortunes of 
Nigel." 

The early part of our imaginary history would be rich with 
coloring from romance, ballad, and chronicle. We should find 
ourselves in the company of knights such as those of Froissart, 



246 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

and of pilgrims sucli as those who rode with Chaucer from the 
Tabard. Society would be shown from the highest to the 
lowest, — from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw; 
from the throne of the legate to the chimney-corner where the 
begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders, — 
the stately monastery, with the good cheer in its refectory, and 
the high-mass in its chapel, — the manor-house, with its hunting 
and hawking, — the tournament, with its heralds and ladies, the 
trumpets and the cloth of gold, — would give truth and life to 
the representation. We should perceive, in a thousand slight 
touches, the importance of the privileged burgher, and the 
fierce and haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of the 
degraded villain. The revival of letters would not merely be 
described in a few magnificent periods. We should discern, in 
innumerable particulars, the fermentation of mind, the eager 
appetite for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from 
the fifteenth century. In the Reformation we should see, not 
merely a schism which changed the ecclesiastical constitution of 
England, and the mutual relations of the European powers, but 
a moral war which raged in every family, which set the father 
against the son, and the son against the father, the mother 
against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother. 
Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should 
have* the change of his character from his profuse and joyous 
youth, to his savage and imperious old age. We should perceive 
the gradual progress of selfish and tyrannical passions, in a 
mind not naturally insensible or ungenerous ; and to the last we 
should detect some remains of that open and noble temper 
which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, struggling 



HISTORY. 247 

with the hardness of despotism, and the irritability of disease. 
We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness, and in all her 
strength, surrounded by the handsome favorites whom she never 
trusted, and the wise old statesmen, whom she never dismissed, 
uniting in herself the most contradictory qualities of both her 
parents, — the coquetry, the caprice, the petty malice of Anne, 
— the haughty and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no 
hesitation in saying, that a great artist might produce a portrait 
of this remar'Kable woman, at least as striking as that in the 
novel of " Kenilworth," without employing a single trait not 
authenticated by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should 
see arts cultivated, wealth accumulated, the conveniences of life 
improved. We should see the keeps, where nobles, insecure 
themselves, spread insecurity around them, gradually giving 
place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat, 
and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should see towns 
extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of fishermen turned 
into wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his 
hut more commodiously furnished. We should see those opin- 
ions and feelings which produced the great struggle against the 
house of Stuart slowly growing up in the bosoms of private 
families, before they manifested themselves in parliamentary 
debates. Then would come the Civil War. Those skirmishes, 
on which Clarendon dwelt so minutely, would be told, as Thucyd- 
ides would have told them, with perspicuous conciseness. 
They are merely connecting links. But the great characteristics 
of the age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the 
fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, 
whose excesses disgraced the royal cause, — the austerity of the 



248 THOMAS BABINGTON MA CAUL AY. 

Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the inde- 
pendent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe 
countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent, the absurd 
names and phrases which marked the Puritans, — the valor, the 
policy, the public spirit, which lurked beneath these ungraceful 
disguises, the dreams of the raving Fifth-monarchy-man, the 
dreams, scarcely less wild, of the philosophic republican, — all 
these would enter into the representation, and render it at once 
more exact and more striking. 

The instruction derived from history thus written would be of 
a vivid and practical character. It would be received by the 
imagination as well as by the reason. It would be not merely 
traced on the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too, 
would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. 
As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and 
most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like 
supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact 
is that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of 
moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the 
community, and which ordinarily proceeded far, before their 
progress is indicated by any public measure. An intimate 
knowledge of the domestic history of nations is therefore abso- 
lutely necessary to the prognosis of political events, A narrative 
defective in this respect is as useless as a medical treatise which 
should pass by all the symptoms attendant on the early stage of 
a disease, and mention only what occurs when the patient is 
beyond the reach of remedies. 

A historian, such as we are attempting to describe, would 
indeed be an intellectual prodigy. In his mind, powers, scarcely 



HISTORY. 249 

compatible with each other, must be tempered into an exquisite 
harmony. We shall sooner see another Shakespeare or another 
Homer. The highest excellence to which any single faculty can 
be brought, would be less surprising than such a happy and 
delicate combination of qualities. Yet the contemplation of 
imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless employment 
of the mind. It cannot, indeed, produce perfection, but it 
produces improvement, and nourishes that generous and liberal 
fastidiousness, which is not inconsistent with the strongest 
sensibility to merit, and which, while it exalts our conceptions 
of the art, does not render us unjust to the artist. 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 



A Lecture Delivered by James Anthony Froude at the Royal 
Institution February 5, 1S64. 

(Born 1818.) 




ADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — I have undertaken to 
speak to you this evening on what is called the Science 
of History. I fear it is a dry subject ; and there 
seems, indeed, something incongruous in the very con- 
nection of such words as Science and History. It is as if we 
were to talk of the color of sound, or the longitude of the Rule- 
of-three. Where it is so difficult to make out the truth on the 
commonest disputed fact in matters passing under our very eyes, 
how can we talk of a science in things long past, which come to 
us only through books ? It often seems to me as if History was 
like a child's box of letters, with which we can spell any word 
we please. We have only to pick out such letters as we want, 
arrange them as we like, and say nothing about those which do 
not suit our purpose. 

I will try to make the thing intelligible, and I will try not to 
' 250 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 25 I 

weary you ; but I am doubtful of my success either way. First, 
however, I wish to say a word or two about the eminent person 
whose name is connected with this way of looking at History, 
and whose premature death struck us all with such a sudden 
sorrow. Many of you, perhaps, recollect Mr. Buckle as he 
stood not so long ago in this place. He spoke more than an 
hour without a note, — never repeating himself, never wasting 
words ; laying out his matter as easily and as pleasantly as if he 
had been talking to us at his own fireside. We might think 
what we pleased of Mr. Buckle's views, but it was plain enough 
that he was a man of uncommon power ; and he had qualities 
also — qualities to which he, perhaps, himself attached little 
value — as rare as they were admirable. 

Most of us, when we have hit on something which we are 
pleased to think important and original, feel as if we should 
burst with it. We come out into the book-market with our 
wares in hand, and ask for thanks and recognition. Mr. Buckle, 
at an early age, conceived the thought which made him famous, 
but he took the measure of his abilities. He knew that when- 
ever he pleased he could command personal distinction, but he 
cared more for his subject than for himself. He was contented 
to work with patient reticence, unknown and unheard-of, for 
twenty years ; and then, at middle life, he produced a work 
which was translated at once into French and German, and, of 
all places in the world, fluttered the dovecots of the Imperial 
Academy of St. Petersburg. 

Goethe says somewhere, that as soon as a man has done any 
thing remarkable, there seems to be a general conspiracy to 
prevent him from doing it again. He is feasted, feted, caressed ; 



252 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

his time is stolen from him by breakfasts, dinners, societies, idle 
businesses of a thousand kinds. Mr. Buckle had his share of 
all this ; but there are also more dangerous enemies that wait 
upon success like his. He had scarcely won for himself the 
place which he deserved, than his health was found shattered by 
his labors. He had but time to show us how large a man he 
was, time just to sketch the outlines of his philosophy, and he 
passed away as suddenly as he appeared. He went abroad to 
recover strength for his work, but his work was done with and 
over. He died of a fever at Damascus, vexed only that he was 
compelled to leave it uncompleted. Almost his last conscious 
words were : " My book, my book ! I shall never finish my 
book ! " He went away as he had lived, nobly careless of him- 
self, and thinking only of the thing which he had undertaken 
to do. 

But his labor had not been thrown away. Disagree with him 
as we might, the effect which he had already produced was 
unmistakable, and it is not likely to pass away. What he said 
was not essentially new. Some such interpretation of human 
things is as early as the beginning of thought. But Mr. Buckle, 
on the one hand, had the art which belongs to men of genius : 
he could present his opinions with peculiar distinctness; and, 
on the other hand, there is much in the mode of speculation at 
present current among us for which those opinions have an 
unusual fascination. They do not please us, but they excite and 
irritate us. We are angry with them ; and we betray, in being 
so, an uneasy misgiving that there may be more truth in those 
opinions than we like to allow. 

Mr. Buckle's general theory was something of this kind : 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 253 

When human creatures began first to look about tlieni in the 
world they lived in, there seemed to be no order in any thing. 
Days and nights were not the same length. The air was some- 
times hot and sometimes cold. Some of the stars rose and set 
like the sun ; some were almost motionless in the sky ; some 
described circles round a central star above the north horizon. 
The planets went on principles of their own ; and in the ele- 
ments there seemed nothing but caprice. Sun and moon would 
at times go out in eclipse. Sometimes the earth itself would 
shake under men's feet ; and they could only suppose that earth 
and air and sky and water were inhabited and managed by 
creatures as wayward as themselves. 

Time went on, and the disorder began to arrange itself. Cer- 
tain influences seemed beneficent to men, others malignant and 
destructive ; and the world was supposed to be animated by 
good spirits and evil spirits, who were continually fighting 
against each other, in outward nature and in human creatures 
themselves. Finally, as men observed more and imagined less, 
these interpretations gave way also. Phenomena the most oppo- 
site in effect were seen to be the result of the same natural law. 
The fire did not burn the house down if the owners of it were 
careful, but remained on the hearth and boiled the pot ; nor did 
it seem more inclined to burn a bad man's house down than a 
good man's, provided the badness did not take the form of neg- 
ligence. The phenomena of nature were found for the most 
part to proceed in an orderly, regular way, and their variations 
to be such as could be counted upon. From observing the 
order of things, the step was easy to cause and effect. An 
eclipse, instead of being a sign of the anger of Heaven, was 



254 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

found to be the necessary and innocent result of the relative 
position of sun, moon, and earth. The comets became bodies 
in space, unrelated to the beings who had imagined that all 
creation was watching them and their doings. By degrees 
caprice, volition, all symptoms of arbitrary action, disappeared 
out of the universe ; and almost every phenomenon in earth or 
heaven was found attributable to some law, either understood or 
perceived to exist. Thus nature was reclaimed from the imag- 
ination. The first fantastic conception of things gave way before 
the moral ; the moral in turn gave way before the natural ; and 
at last there was left but one small tract of jungle where the 
theory of law had failed to penetrate, — the doings and charac- 
ters of human creatures themselves. 

There, and only there, amidst the conflicts of reason and 
emotion, conscience and desire, spiritual forces were still con- 
ceived to exist. Cause and effect were not traceable when there 
was a free volition to disturb the connection. In all other 
things, from a given set of conditions the consequences neces- 
sarily followed. With man, the word " law " changed its mean- 
ing ; and instead of a fixed order, which he could not choose 
but follow, it became a moral precept, which he might disobey 
if he dared. 

This it was which Mr. Buckle disbelieved. The economy 
whidi prevailed throughout nature, he thought it very unlikely 
should admit of this exception. He considered that human 
beings acted necessarily from the impulse of outward circum- 
stances upon their mental and bodily condition at any given 
moment. Every man, he said, acted from a motive ; and his 
conduct was determined by the motive which affected him most 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 255 

powerfully. Every man naturally desires what he supposes to be 
good for him ; but, to do well, he must know well. He will eat 
poison, so long as he does not know that it is poison. Let him 
see that it will kill him, and he will not touch it. The question 
was not of moral right and wrong. Once let him be thoroughly 
made to feel that the thing is destructive, and he will leave it 
alone by the law of his nature. His virtues are the result of 
knowledge ; his faults, the necessary consequence of the want of 
it. A boy desires to draw. He knows nothing about it : he 
draws men like trees or houses, with their centre of gravity any- 
where. He makes mistakes because he knows no better. We 
do not blame him. Till he is better taught, he cannot help it. 
But his instruction begins. He arrives at straight lines ; then at 
solids ; then at curves. He learns perspective, and light and 
shade. He observes more accurately the forms which he wishes 
to represent. He perceives effects, and he perceives the means 
by which they are produced. He has learned what to do ; and, 
in part, he has learned how to do it. His after-progress will 
depend on the amount of force which his nature possesses ; but all 
this is as natural as the growth of an acorn. You do not preach 
to the acorn that it is its duty to become a large tree ; you do 
not preach to the art-pupil that it is his duty to become a Holbein. 
You plant your acorn in favorable soil, where it can have light 
and air, and be sheltered from the wind ; you remove the super- 
fluous branches, you train the strength into the leading shoots. 
The acorn will then become as fine a tree as it has vital force to 
become. The difference between men and other things is only 
in the largeness and variety of man's capacities ; and in this 
special capacity, that he alone has the power of observing the 



256 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

circumstances favorable to his own growth, and can apply them 
for himself, yet, again, with this condition, — that he is not, as is 
commonly supposed, free to choose whether he will make use of 
these appliances or not. When he knows what is good for him, 
he will choose it ; and he will judge what is good for him by the 
circumstances which have made him what he is. 

And what he would do, Mr. Buckle supposed that he always 
had done. His history had been a natural growth as much 
as the growth of the acorn. His improvement had followed 
the progress of his knowledge ; and, by a comparison of 
his outward circumstances with the condition of his mind, his 
whole proceedings on this planet, his creeds and constitutions, 
his good deeds and his bad, his arts and his sciences, his empires 
and his revolutions, would be found all to arrange themselves 
into clear relations of cause and effect. 

If, when Mr. Buckle pressed his conclusions, we objected the 
difficulty of finding what the truth about past times really was, 
he would admit it candidly as far as concerned individuals ; 
but there was not the same difficulty, he said, with masses of 
men. We might disagree about the character of Julius or 
Tiberius Caesar, but we could know well enough the Romans of 
the Empire. We had their literature to tell us how they 
thought ; we had their laws to tell us how they governed ; we 
had the broad face of the world, the huge mountainous outline 
of their general doings upon it, to tell us how they acted. He 
believed it was all reducible to laws, and could be made as 
intelligible as the growth of the chalk cliffs or the coal 
measures. 

And thus consistently Mr. Buckle cared little for individuals. 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 257 

He did not believe (as some one has said) that the history of 
mankind is the history of its great men. Great men with him 
were but larger atoms, obeying the same impulses with the rest, 
only perhaps a trifle more erratic. With them or without them, 
the course of things would have been much the same. 

As an illustration of the truth of his view, he would jDoint to 
the new science of Political Economy. Here already was a 
large area of human activity in which natural laws were found to 
act unerringly. Men had gone on for centuries trying to regu- 
late trade on moral principles. They would fix wages according 
to some imaginary rule of fairness ; they would fix prices by 
what they considered things ought to cost; they encouraged one 
trade or discouraged another, for moral reasons. They might as 
well have tried to work a steam-engine on moral reasons. The 
great statesmen whose names were connected with these enter- 
prises might have as well legislated that water should run up- 
hill. There w^ere natural laws, fixed in the conditions of 
things ; and to contend against them was the old battle of the 
Titans against the gods. 

As it was with political economy, so it was with all other forms 
of human activity ; and as the true laws of political economy 
explained the troubles which people fell into in old times because 
they were ignorant of them, so the true laws of human nature, 
as soon as we knew them, would explain their mistakes in more 
serious matters, and enable us to manage better for the future. 
Geographical position, climate, air, soil, and the like, had their 
several influences. The northern nations are hardy and indus- 
trious, because they must till the earth if they would eat the 
fruits of it, and because the temperature is too low to make an 



258 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

idle life enjoyable. In the south, the soil is more productive, 
while less food is wanted and fewer clothes ; and, in the exquisite 
air, exertion is not needed to make the sense of existence de- 
lightful. Therefore, in the south we find men lazy and indolent. 

True, there are difficulties in these views ; the home of the 
languid Italian was the home also of the sternest race of whom 
the stor}' of mankind retains a record. And again, when we 
are told that the Spaniards are superstitious because Spain is a 
country of earthquakes, we remember Japan, the spot in all the 
world where earthquakes are most frequent, and where at the 
same time there is the most serene disbelief in any supernatural 
agency whatsoever. 

Moreover, if men grow into what they are by natural laws, 
they cannot help being what they are ; and if they cannot help 
being what they are, a good deal will have to be altered in our 
general view of human obligations and responsibilities. 

That, however, in these theories there is a great deal of truth, 
is quite certain, were there but a hope that those who maintain 
them would be contented with that admission. A man born in 
a Mahometan country grows up a Mahometan ; in a Catholic 
country, a Catholic ; in a Protestant country, a Protestant. His 
opinions are like his language : he learns to think as he learns 
to speak ; and it is absurd to suppose him responsible for being 
what nature makes him. We take pains to educate children. 
There is a good education and a bad education ; there are rules 
well ascertained by which characters are influenced ; and, clearly 
enough, it is no mere matter for a boy's free will whether he 
turns out well or ill. We try to train him into good habits ; we 
keep him out of the way of temptations ; we see that he is well 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 259 

taught ; we mix kindness and strictness ; we surround him with 
every good influence we can command. These are what are 
termed the advantages of a good education ; and if we fail to 
provide those under our care with it, and if they go wrong, the 
responsibility we feel is as much ours as theirs. This is at once 
an admission of the power over us of outward circumstances. 

In the same way, we allow for the strength of temptations, 
and the like. 

In general, it is perfectly obvious that men do necessarily 
absorb, out of the influences in which they grow up, something 
which gives a complexion to their whole after-character. 

When historians have to relate great social or speculative 
changes, the overthrow of a monarchy, or the establishment of 
a creed, they do but half their duty if they merely relate the 
events. In an account, for instance, of the rise of Mahometan- 
ism, it is not enough to describe the character of the Prophet, 
the ends which he set before him, the means which he made use 
of, and the effect which he produced ; the historian must show 
what there was in the condition of the Eastern races which 
enabled Mahomet to act upon them so powerfully ; their existing 
beliefs, their existing moral and political condition. 

In our estimate of the past, and in our calculations of the 
future, in the judgments which we pass upon one another, we 
measure responsibility, not by the thing done, but by the oppor- 
tunities which people have had of knowing better or worse. In 
the efforts which we make to keep our children from bad asso- 
ciations or friends, we admit that external circumstances have a 
powerful effect in making men what they are. 

But are circumstances every thing ? That is the whole ques- 



26o JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

tion. A science of history, if it is more than a misleading name, 
implies that the relation between cause and effect holds in 
human things as completely as in all others ; that the origin of 
human actions is not to be looked for in mysterious properties 
of the mind, but in influences which are palpable and ponder- 
able. 

When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralized 
by what is called volition, the word Science is out of place. If 
it is free to man to choose what he will do or not do, there is no 
adequate science of him. If there is a science of him, there is 
no free choice, and the praise or blame with which we regard 
one another are impertinent and out of place. 

I am trespassing upon these ethical grounds because, unless I 
do, the subject cannot be made intelligible. Mankind are but 
an aggregate of individuals ; History is but the record of in- 
dividual action : and what is true of the part is true of the whole. 

We feel keenly about such things, and, when the logic becomes 
perplexing, we are apt to grow rhetorical about them. But 
rhetoric is only misleading. Whatever the truth may be, it is 
best that we should know it ; and for truth of any kind we 
should keep our Heads and hearts as cool as we can. 

I will say at once, that, if we had the whole case before us ; 
if we were taken, like Leibnitz's Tarquin, into the council- 
chamber of Nature, and were shown what we really were, where 
we came from, and where we were going, however unpleasant it 
might be for some of us to find ourselves, like Tarquin, made 
into villains, from the subtle necessities of " the best of all 
possible worlds," — nevertheless, some such theory as Mr. 
Buckle's might possibly turn out to be true. Likely enough, 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 26 1 

there is some great " equation of the universe " where the value 
of the unknown quantities can be determined. But we must 
treat things in relation to our own jDowers and positions, and the 
question is, whether the sweep of those vast curves can be 
measured by the intellect of creatures of a day like ourselves. 

The " Faust " of Goethe, tired of the barren round of earthly 
knowledge, calls magic to his aid. He desires, first, to see the 
spirit of the Macrocosmos, but his heart fails him before he 
ventures that tremendous experiment, and he summons before 
him, instead, the spirit of his own race. There he feels himself 
at home. The stream of life and the storm of action, the 
everlasting ocean of existence, the web and the woof, and the 
roaring loom of Time, — he gazes upon them all, and in pas- 
sionate exultation claims fellowship with the awful thing before 
him. But the majestic vision fades, and a voice comes to him, 
— - " Thou art fellsw with the spirits which thy mind can grasp, 
not with me." 

Had Mr. Buckle tried to follow his principles into detail, 
it might have fared no better with him than with " Faust." 

What are the conditions of a science ? and when may any 
subject be said to enter the scientific stage ? I suppose when 
the facts begin to resolve themselves into groups ; when phe- 
nomena are no longer isolated experiences, but appear in con- 
nection and order ; when, after certain antecedents, certain 
consequences are uniformly seen to follow ; when facts enough 
have been collected to furnish a basis for conjectural explana- 
tion ; and when conjectures have so far ceased to be utterly 
vague that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by 
the help of them. 



262 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

Till a subject has advanced as far as this, to speak of a sci- 
ence of it is an abuse of language. It is not enough to say that 
there must be a science of human things because there is a 
science of all other things. This is like saying the planets must 
be inhabited because the only planet of which we have any 
experience is inhabited. It may or may not be true, but it is 
not a practical question ; it does not affect the practical treat- 
ment of the matter in hand. 

Let us look at the history of Astronomy. 

So long as sun, moon, and planets were supposed to be gods 
or angels : so long as the sword of Orion was not a metaphor, 
but a fact ; and the groups of stars which inlaid the floor of 
heaven were the glittering trophies of the loves and wars of the 
Pantheon, — so long there was no science of Astronomy, There 
was fancy, imagination, poetr}^, perhaps reverence, but no sci- 
ence. As soon, however, as it was observed that the stars 
retained their relative places ; that the times of their rising and 
setting varied with the seasons ; that sun, moon, and planets 
moved among them in a plane, and the belt of the Zodiac was 
marked out and divided, — then a new order of things began. 
Traces of the earlier stage remained in the names of the signs 
and constellations, just as the Scandinavian mythology survives 
now in the names of the days of the week ; but, for all that, the 
understanding was now at work on the thing ; science had begun, 
and the first triumph of it was the power of foretelling the 
future. Eclipses were perceived to recur in cycles of nineteen 
years, and philosophers were able to say when an eclipse was to 
be looked for. The periods of the planets were determined. 
Theories were invented to account for their eccentricities ; and, 



THE SCIENCE OE HISTORY. 263 

false as those theories might be, the position of the planets could 
be calculated with moderate certainty by them. The very first 
result of the science, in its most imperfect stage, was a power of 
foresight ; and this was possible before any one true astronom- 
ical law had been discovered. 

We should not therefore question the possibility of a science 
of history because the explanations of its phenomena were rudi- 
mentary or imperfect : that they might be, and long continue to 
be, and yet enough might be done to show that there was such 
a thing, and that it was not entirely without use. But how was 
it that in those rude days, with small knowledge of mathe- 
matics, and with no better instruments than flat walls and dial- 
plates, those first astronomers made progress so considerable } 
Because, I suppose, the phenomena which they were observing 
recurred, for the most part, within moderate intervals ; so that 
they could collect large experience within the compass of their 
natural lives ; because days and months and years were measur- 
able periods, and within them the more simple phenomena per- 
petually repeated themselves. 

But how would it have been if, instead of turning on its axis 
once in twenty-four hours, the earth had taken a year about it ; 
if the year had been nearly four hundred years ; if man's life 
had been no longer than it is, and for the initial steps of astron- 
omy there had been nothing to depend upon except observations 
recorded in history ? How many ages would have passed, had 
this been our condition, before it would have occurred to any one 
that, in what they saw night after night, there was any kind of 
order at all ? 

We can see to some extent how it would have been, by the 



264 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

present state of those parts of the science which in fact depend 
on remote recorded observations. The movements of the 
comets are still extremely uncertain. The times of their return 
can be calculated only with the greatest vagueness. 

And yet such a hypothesis as I have suggested would but 
inadequately express the position in which we are in fact placed 
toward history. There the phenomena never repeat themselves. 
There we are dependent wholly on the record of things said to 
have happened once, but which never happen or can happen a 
second time. There no experiment is possible ; we can watch 
for no recurring fact to test the worth of our conjectures. It 
has been suggested fancifully, that, if we consider the universe 
to be infinite, time is the same as eternity, and the past is per- 
petually present. Light takes nine years to come to us from 
Sirius: those rays which we may see to-night, when we leave 
this place, left Sirius nine years ago; and could the inhabitants 
of Sirius see the earth at this moment, they would see the 
English army in the trenches before Sebastopol, Florence 
Nightingale watching at Scutari over the wounded at Inkermann, 
and the peace of England undisturbed by " Essays and Re- 
views." 

As the stars recede into distance, so time recedes with them ; 
and there may be, and probably are, stars from which Noah 
might be seen stepping into the ark. Eve listening to the tempta- 
tion of the serpent, or that older race, eating the oysters and 
leaving the shell-heaps behind them, when the Baltic was an 
open sea. 

Could we but compare notes, something might be done ; but 
of this there is no present hope, and without it there will be no 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 265 

science of history. Eclipses, recorded in ancient books, can be 
verified by calculations, and lost dates can be recovered by 
them ; and we can foresee, by the laws which they follow, when 
there will be eclipses again. Will a time ever be when the lost 
secret of the foundation of Rome can be recovered by historic 
laws "i If not, where is our science ? It may be said that this 
is a particular fact, that we can deal satisfactorily with general 
phenomena affecting eras and cycles. Well, then, let us take 
some general phenomenon ; Mahometanism, for instance, or 
Buddhism. Those are large enough. Can you imagine a sci- 
ence which would have^ foretold such movements as those? 
The state of things out of which they rose is obscure ; but, 
suppose it not obscure, can you conceive that, with any amount 
of historical insight into the old Oriental beliefs, you could have 
seen that they were about to transform themselves into those 
particular forms and no other ? 

It is not enough to say, that, after the fact, you can under- 
stand partially how Mahometanism came to be. All historians 
worth the name have told us something about that. But when 
we talk of science, we mean something with more ambitious 
pretences, we mean something which can foresee as well as 
explain ; and, thus looked at, to state the problem is to show its 
absurdity. As little could the wisest man have foreseen this 
mighty revolution, as thirty years ago such a thing as Mormon- 
ism could have been anticipated in America ; as little as it could 

' It is objected that geology is a science : yet tliat geology cannot foretell the future 
changes of the earth's surface. Geologfy is not a century old, and its periods are 
measured by milKons of years. Yef, if geology cannot foretell future facts, it enabled 
Sir Roderick Murchison to foretell the discovery of Australian gold. 



266 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

have been foreseen that table-turning and spirit-rapping would 
have been an outcome of the scientific culture of England in the 
nineteenth century. 

The greatest of Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the 
seething mass of moral putrefaction round him, detected and 
deigned to notice among its elements a certain detestable super- 
stition, so he called it, rising up amidst the offscouring of the 
Jews, which was named Christianity. Could Tacitus have 
looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of Gregory VII, 
could he have beheld the representative of the majesty of the 
Caesars holding the stirrup of the Pontiff of that vile and exe- 
crated sect, the spectacle would scarcely have appeared to him 
the fulfilment of a national expectation, or an intelligible result 
of the causes in operation round him. Tacitus, indeed, was 
born before the science of history ; but would M. Comte have 
seen any more clearly ? 

Nor is the case much better if we are less hard upon our phil- 
osophy ; if we content ourselves with the past, and require only 
a scientific explanation of that. 

First, for the facts themselves. They come to us through the 
minds of those who recorded them, neither machines nor angels, 
but fallible creatures, with human passions and prejudices. 
Tacitus and Thucydides were perhaps the ablest men who ever 
gave themselves to writing history ; the ablest, and also the 
most^incapable of conscious falsehood. Yet even now, after all 
these centuries, the truth of what they relate is called in question. 
Good reasons can be given to show that neither of them can be 
confidently trusted. If we doubt with these, whom are we to 
believe ? 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 26/ 

Or, again, let the facts be granted. To revert to my simile of 
the box of letters, you have but to select such facts as suit you, 
you have but to leave alone those which do not suit you, and, 
let your theory of history be what it will, you can find no diffi- 
culty in providing facts to prove it. 

You may have your Hegel's philosophy of history, or you may 
have your Schlegel's philosophy of history ; you may prove 
from history that the world is governed in detail by a special 
Providence ; you may prove that there is no sign of any moral 
agent in the universe, except man ; you may believe, if you like 
it, in the old theory of the wisdom of antiquity ; you may speak, 
as was the fashion in the fifteenth century, of " our fathers, who 
had more wit and wisdom than we ; " or you may talk of " our 
barbarian ancestors," and describe their wars as the scuffling of 
kites and crows. 

You may maintain that the evolution of humanity has been an 
unbroken progress toward perfection ; you may maintain that 
there has been no progress at all, and that man remains the 
same poor creature that he ever was ; or, lastly, you may say, 
with the author of the " Contract Social," that men were purest 
and best in primeval simplicity, — 

" Wlien wild in woods the noble savage ran." 

In all or any of these views, history will stand your friend. 
History, in its passive irony, will make no objection. Like 
Jarno, in Goethe's novel, it will not condesend to argue with you, 
and will provide you with abundant illustrations of any thing 
which you may wish to believe. 

"What is history," said Napoleon, "but a fiction agreed 



268 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

upon ? " " My friend," said Faust to the student, who was 
growing enthuiastic about the spirit of past ages, — " my friend, 
the times which are gone are a book with seven seals ; and what 
you call the spirit of past ages is but the spirit of this or that 
worthy gentleman in whose mind those ages are reflected." 

One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat with 
distinctness : that the world is built somehow on moral founda- 
tions ; that, in the long run, it is well with the good ; in the long 
run, it is ill with the wicked. But this is no science ; it is no 
more than the old doctrine taught long ago by the Hebrew 
prophets. The theories of M. Comte and his disciples advance 
us, after all, not a step beyond the trodden and familiar ground. 
If men are not entirely animals, they are at least half animals, 
and are subject in this aspect of them to the conditions of 
animals. So far as those parts of man's doings are concerned, 
which neither have, nor need have, any thing moral about them, 
so far the laws of him are calculable. There are laws for his 
digestion, and laws of the means by which his digestive organs 
are supplied with matter. But pass beyond them, and where 
are we 1 In a world where it would be as easy to calculate 
men's actions by laws like those of positive philosophy as to 
measure the orbit of Neptune with a foot rule, or weigh Sirius 
in a grocer's scale. 

And it is not difficult to see why this should be. The first 
principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be 
plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self- 
interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unen- 
lightened ; but it is assumed as an axiom, that every man, in 
whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 269 

will promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined by 
his will ; it is determined by the object of his desire. Adam 
Smith, in laying the foundations of political economy, expressly 
eliminates every other motive. He does not say that men 
never act on other motives ; still less, that they never ought to 
act on other motives. He asserts merely that, as far as the 
arts of production are concerned, and of buying and selling, the 
action of self-interest may be counted upon as uniform. What 
Adam Smith says of political economy, Mr. Buckle would 
extend over the whole circle of human activity. 

Now, that which especially distinguishes a high order of man 
from a low order of man — that which constitutes human good- 
ness, human greatness, human nobleness — is surely not the 
degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own 
advantage : but it is self-forgetfulness, it is self-sacrifice ; it is the 
disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal 
advantages remote or present, because some other line of con- 
duct is more right. 

We are sometimes told that this is but another way of 
expressing the same thing; that, when a man prefers doing 
what is right, it is only because to do right gives him a higher 
satisfaction. It appears to me, on the contrary, to be a differ- 
ence in the very heart and nature of things. The martyr goes 
to the stake, the patriot to the scaffold, not with a view to 
any futufe reward, to themselves, but because it is a glory to 
fling away their lives for truth and freedom. And so through 
all phases of existence, to the smallest details of common life, 
the beautiful character is the unselfish character. Those whom 
we most love and admire are those to whom the thought of self 



f 



270 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

seems never to occur ; who do simply and with no ulterior aim 
— with no thought whether it will be pleasant to themselves or 
unpleasant — that which is good and right and generous. 

Is this still selfishness, only more enlightened ? I do not 
think so. The essence of true nobility, is neglect of self. Let 
the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is 
gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower. Surely it is a para- 
dox to speak of the self-interest of a martyr who dies for a 
cause, the triumph of which he will never enjoy ; and the great- 
est of that great company in all ages would have done what they 
did, had their personal prospects closed with the grave. Nay, 
there have been those so zealous for some glorious principle as 
to wish themselves blotted out of the book of Heaven if the 
cause of Heaven could succeed. 

And out of this mysterious quality, whatever it be, arise the 
higher relations of human life, the higher modes of human 
obligation. Kant, the philosopher, used to say that there were 
two things which overwhelmed him with awe as he thought of 
them. One was the star-sown deep of space, without limit and 
without end ; the other was, right and wrong. Right, the sacri- 
fice of self to good ; wrong, the sacrifice of good to self, — not 
graduated objects of desire, to which we are determined by 
the degrees of our knowledge, but wide asunder as pole and 
pole, as light and darkness : one the object of infinite love ; the 
other, the object of infinite detestation and scorn. It is in this 
marvellous power in men to do wrong (it is an old story, but 
none the less true for that), — it is in this power to do wrong — 
wrong or right, as it lies somehow with ourselves to choose 
— that the impossibility stands of forming scientific calculations 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 27 1 

of what men will do before the fact, or scientific explanations of 
what they have clone after the fact. If men were consistently 
selfish, you might analyze their motives ; if they were consis- 
tently noble they would express in their conduct the laws of the 
highest perfection. But so long as two natures are mixed 
together, and the strange creature which results from the com- 
bination is now under one influence and now under another, so 
long you will make nothing of him except from the old-fash- 
ioned moral — or, if you please, imaginative — point of view. 

Even the laws of political economy itself cease to guide us 
when they touch moral government. So long as labor is a 
chattel to be bought and sold, so long, like other commodities, it 
follows the condition of supply and demand. But if, for his 
misfortune, an employer considers that he stands in human 
relations toward his workmen ; if he believes, rightly or wrongly, 
that he is responsible for them ; that in return for their labor he 
is bound to see that their children are decently taught, and 
they and their families decently fed and clothed and lodged ; 
that he ought to care for them in sickness and in old age, — 
then political economy will no longer direct him, and the rela- 
tions between himself and his dependents will have to be 
arranged on quite other principles. 

So long as he considers only his own material profit, so long 
supply and demand will settle every difficulty ; but the introduc- 
tion of a new factor spoils the equation. 

And it is precisely in this debatable ground of low motives 
and noble emotions ; in the struggle, ever failing yet ever 
renewed, to carry truth and justice into the administration of 
human society ; in the establishment of states and in the over- 



2/2 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

throw of tyrannies ; in the rise and fall of creeds ; in the world 
of idfeas ; in the character and deeds of the great actors in the 
drama of life, where good and evil fight out their everlasting 
battle, now ranged in opposite camps, now and more often in the 
heart, both of them, of each living man, — that the true human 
interest of history resides. The progress of industries, the 
growth of material and mechanical civilization, are interesting; 
but they are not the most interesting. They have their reward 
in the increase of material comforts; but, unless we are mistaken 
about our nature, they do not highly concern us after all. 

Once more : not only is there in men this bafifling duality of 
principle, but there is something else in us which still more 
defies scientific analysis. 

Mr. Buckle would deliver himself from the eccentricities of 
this and that individual by a doctrine of averages. Though he 
cannot tell whether A, B, or C will cut his throat, he may 
assure himself that one man in every fifty thousand, or there- 
about (I forget the exact proportion), will cut his throat, and 
with this he consoles himself. No doubt it is a comforting 
discovery. Unfortunately, the average of one generation need 
not be the average of the next. We may be converted by the 
Japanese, for all that we know, and the Japanese methods of 
taking leave of life may become fashionable among us. Nay, 
did not Novalis suggest that the whole race of men would at 
last become so disgusted with their impotence, that they would 
extinguish themselves by a simultaneous act of suicide, and 
make room for a better order of beings ? Anyhow, the fountain 
out of which the race is flowing perpetually changes ; no two 
generations are alike. Whether there is a change in the organi- 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 2/3 

zation itself we cannot tell; but this is certain, — that as the 
planet varies with the atmosphere which surrounds it, so each 
new generation varies from the last, because it inhales as its 
atmosphere the accumulated experience and knowledge of the 
whole past of the world. These things form the spiritual air 
which we breathe as we grow ; and, in the infinite multiplicity of 
elements of which that air now is composed, it is forever a 
matter of conjecture what the minds will be like which expand 
under its influence. 

From the England of Fielding and Richardson to the England 
of Miss Austen, from the England of Miss Austen to the Eng- 
land of Railways and Free Trade, how vast the change ! Yet 
perhaps Sir Charles Grandison would not seem so strange to us 
now as one of ourselves will seem to our great-grandchildren. 
The world moves faster and faster ; and the difference will 
probably be considerably greater. 

The temper of each new generation is a continual surprise. 
The Fates delight to contradict our most confident expectations. 
Gibbon believed that the era of conquerors was at an end. 
Had he lived out the full life of man, he would have seen 
Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we 
believed the world had grown too civilized for w^ar, and the 
Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a 
new era. Battles bloody as Napoleon's are now the familiar tale 
of every day ; and the arts which have made greatest progress 
are the arts of destruction. What next ? We may strain our 
eyes into the future which lies beyond this waning century; but 
never was conjecture more at fault. It is blank darkness, 
which even the imagination fails to people. 



2/4 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

What, then, is the use of History, and what are its lessons ? 
If it can tell us little of the past, and nothing of the future, why 
waste our time over so barren a study ? 

First, it is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the 
laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, 
creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets 
of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty 
and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at 
last ; not always by the chief offenders, but paid by some one. 
Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and false- 
hood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them, in 
French revolutions and other terrible ways. 

That is one lesson of history. Another is, that we should 
draw no horoscopes ; that we should expect little, for what we 
expect will not come to pass. Revolutions, reformations, — 
those vast movements into which heroes and saints have flung 
themselves, in the belief that they were the dawn of the 
millennium, — have not borne the fruit which they looked for. 
Millenniums are still far away. These great convulsions leave 
the world changed, — perhaps improved, but not improved as 
the actors in them hoped it would be. Luther would have gone 
to work with less heart, could he have foreseen the Thirty Years' 
War, and in the distance the theology of Tubingen. Washing- 
ton might have hesitated to draw the sword against England, 
coiild he have seen the country which he made as we see it 
now.-^ 

The most remarkable anticipations fail us, antecedents the 

1 February, 1864. 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 275 

most apposite mislead us, because the conditions of human 
problems never repeat themselves. Some new feature alters 
everything, — some element which we detect only in its after- 
operation. 

Hut this, it may be said, is but a meagre outcome. Can the 
long records of humanity, with all its joys and sorrows, its 
sufferings and its conquests, teach us more than this ? Let us 
approach the subject from another side. 

If you were asked to point out the special features in which 
Shakespeare's plays are so transcendently excellent, you would 
mention perhaps, among others, this — that his stories are not 
put together, and his characters are not conceived, to illustrate 
any particular law or principle. They teach many lessons, but 
not any one prominent above another ; and when we have drawn 
from them all the direct instruction which they contain, there 
remains still something unresolved, — something which the artist 
gives, and which the philosopher cannot give. 

It is in this characteristic that we are accustomed to say 
Shakespeare's supreme truth lies. He represents real life. His 
drama teaches as life teaches, — neither less nor more. He 
builds his fabrics, as Nature does, on right and wrong ; but 
he does not struggle to make Nature more systematic than she 
is. In the subtle interflow of good and evil ; in the unmerited 
sufferings of innocence ; in the disproportion of penalties to 
desert ; in the seeming blindness with which justice, in at- 
tempting to assert itself, overwhelms innocent and guilty in 
a common ruin, — Shakespeare is trr.o to real experience. The 
mystery of life he leaves as he finds it ; and, in his most 
tremendous positions, he is addressing rather the intellectual 



276 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

emotions than the understanding, — knowing well that the 
understanding in such things is at fault, and the sage as igno- 
rant as the child. 

Only the highest order of genius can represent Nature thus. 
An inferior artist produces either something entirely immoral, 
where good and evil are names, and nobility of disposition is 
supposed to show itself in the absolute disregard of them, or 
else, if he is a better kind of man, he will force on Nature a 
didactic purpose ; he composes what are called moral tales, 
which may edify the conscience, but only mislead the intellect. 

The finest work of this kind produced in modern times is 
Lessing's play of " Nathan the Wise." The object of it is to 
teach religious toleration. The doctrine is admirable, the mode 
in which it is enforced is interesting ; but it has the fatal fault 
that it is not true. Nature does not teach religious toleration by 
any such direct method; and the result is — no one knew it 
better than Lessing himself — that the play is not poetry, but 
only splendid manufacture. Shakespeare is eternal ; Lessing's 
" Nathan " will pass away with the mode of thought which gave it 
birth. One- is based on fact ; the other, on human theory about 
fact. The theory seems at first sight to contain the most imme- 
diate instruction ; but it is not really so. 

Gibber and others, as you know, wanted to alter Shake- 
speare. The French king, in " Lear," was to be got rid of ; 
Cordelia was to marry Edgar, and Lear himself was to be 
rewarded for his sufferings by a golden old age. They could not 
bear that Hamlet should suffer for the sins of Claudius. The 
wicked king was to die, and the wicked mother ; and Hamlet 
and Ophelia were to make a match of it, and live happily 



THE SCIEA^CE OF HISTORY. 277 

ever after. A common novelist would have arranged it thus ; 
and you would have had your comfortable moral that wick- 
edness was fitly punished, and virtue had its due reward, 
and all would have been well. But Shakespeare would not 
have it so. Shakespeare knew that crime was not so simple in 
its consequences, or Providence so paternal. He was contented 
to take the truth from life ; and the effect upon the mind of the 
most correct theory of what life ought to be, compared to the 
effect of the life itself, is infinitesimal in comparison. 

Again, let us compare the popular historical treatment of 
remarkable incidents with Shakespeare's treatment of thenio 
Look at " Macbeth." You may derive abundant instruction 
from it, — instruction of many kinds. There is a moral lesson 
of profound interest in the steps by which a noble nature glides 
to perdition. In more modern fashion you may speculate, if 
you like, on the political conditions represented there, and the 
temptation presented in absolute monarchies to unscrupulous 
ambition ; you may say, like Doctor Slop, these things could not 
have happened under a constitutional government : or, again, 
you may take up your parable against superstition ; you may 
dilate on the frightful consequences of a belief in witches, and 
reflect on the superior advantages of an age of schools and news- 
papers. If the bare facts of the story had come down to us 
from a chronicler, and an ordinary writer of the nineteenth cen- 
tury had undertaken to relate them, his account, we may depend 
upon it, would have been put together upon one or other of 
these principles. Yet, by the side of that unfolding of the 
secrets of the prison-house of the soul, what lean and shrivelled 
anatomies the best of such descriptions would seem ! 



2/8 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

Shakespeare himself, I suppose, could not have given us a 
theory of what he meant ; he gave us the thing itself, on which 
we mi^ht make whatever theories we pleased. 

Or, again, look at Homer. 

The " Iliad" is from two to three thousand years older than 
"Macbeth," and yet it is as fresh as if it had been written 
yesterday. We have there no lessons save in the emotions which 
rise in us as we read. Homer had no philosophy ; he never 
struggles to press upon us his views about this or that ; you can 
scarcely tell, indeed, whether his sympathies are Greek or 
Trojan : but he represents to us faithfully the men and women 
among whom he lived. He sang the tale of Troy, he touched 
his lyre, he drained the golden beaker in the halls of men like 
those on whom he was conferring immortality. And thus, 
although no Agamemnon, king of men, ever led a Grecian fleet to 
Ilium ; though no Priam sought the midnight tent of Achilles ; 
though Ulysses and Diomed and Nestor were but names, and 
Helen but a dream, yet, through Homer's power of representing 
men and women, those old Greeks will still stand out from 
amidst the darkness of the ancient world with a sharpness of 
outline which belongs to no period of history except the most 
recent. For the mere hard purposes of history, the " Iliad " and 
" Odyssey " are the most effective books which ever were written. 
We see the hall of Menelaus, we see the garden of Alcinous, we 
seev Nausicaa among her maidens on the shore, we see* the 
mellow monarch sitting with ivory sceptre in the market-place 
dealing out genial justice. Or, again, when the wild mood is 
on, we can hear the crash of the spears, the rattle of the armor 
as the heroes fall, and the plunging of the horses among the 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 279 

slain. Could we enter the palace of an old Ionian lord, we 
know^what we should see there ; we know the words in which 
he would address us. We could meet Hector as a friend. If 
we could choose a companion to spend an evening with over a 
fireside, it would be the man of many counsels, the husband of 
Penelope. 

I am not going into the vexed question whether history or 
poetry is the more true. It has been sometimes said that poetry 
is the more true, because it can make things more like what our 
moral sense would prefer they should be. We hear of poetic 
justice and the like, as if nature and fact were not just enough. 

I entirely dissent from that view. So far as poetry attempts 
to improve on truth in that way, so far it abandons truth, and is 
false to itself. Even literal facts, exactly as they were, a great 
poet will prefer whenever he can get them. Shakespeare in the 
historical plays is studious, wherever possible, to give the very 
words which he finds to have been used ; and it shows how 
wisely he was guided in this, that those magnificent speeches 
of Wolsey are taken exactly, with no more change than the 
metre makes necessary, from Cavendish's Life. Marlborough 
read Shakespeare for English histor}', and read nothing else. 
The poet only is not bound, when it is inconvenient, to what may 
be called the accidents of facts. It was enough for Shakespeare 
to know that Prince Hal in his youth had lived among loose 
companioni, and the tavern in Eastcheap came in to fill out his 
picture ; although Mrs. Quickly and Falstaff and Poins and 
Bardolph were more likely to have been fallen in with by Shakes- 
peare himself at the Mermaid, than to have been comrades of 
the true Prince Henry. It was enough for Shakespeare to draw 



}\ 



280 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

real men, and the situation, whatever it might be, would sit easy 
on them. In this sense only it is that poetry is truer than 
History, — that it can make a picture more complete. It may 
take liberties with time and space, and give the action distinct- 
ness by throwing it into more manageable compass. But it may 
not alter th.e real conditions of things, or represent life as other 
than it is. The greatness of the poet depends on his being true 
to Nature, without insisting that Nature shall theorize with him, 
without making her more just, more philosophical, more moral 
than reality ; and, in difficult matters, leaving much to reflection 
which cannot be explained. 

And if this be true of poetry — if Homer and Shakespeare 
are what they are from the absence of every thing didactic 
about them — may we not thus learn something of what history 
should be, and in what sense it should aspire to teach ? 

If poetry must not theorize, much less should the historian 
theorize, whose obligations to be true to fact are even greater 
than the poet's. If the drama is grandest when the action is 
least explicable by laws, because then it best resembles life, 
then history will be grandest also under the same conditions. 
" Macbeth," were it literally true, would be perfect history ; and 
so far as the historian can approach to that kind of model, so 
far as he can let his story tell itself in the deeds and words of 
those who act it out, so far is he most successful. His work is 
no longer the vapor of his own brain, which a breath will scatter ; 
it is the thing itself, which will have interest for all time. A 
thousand theories maybe formed about it, — spiritual theories. 
Pantheistic theories, cause and effect theories ? bu^ each age 
will have its own philosophy of history, and all these in turn will 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 28 1 

fail and die. Hegel falls out of date, Schlegel falls out of date, 
and Comte in good time will fall out of date ; the thought 
about the thing must change as we change ; but the thing itself 
can never change ; and a history is durable or perishable as it 
contains more or least of the writer's own speculations. The 
splendid intellect of Gibbon for the most part kept him true to 
the right course in this ; yet the philosophical chapters for which 
he has been most admired or censured may hereafter be thought 
the least interesting in his work. The time has been when they 
would not have been comprehended ; the time may come when 
they will seem commonplace. 

It may be said, that in requiring history to be written like a 
drama, we require an impossibility. 

For history to be written with the complete form of a drama, 
doubtless is impossible ; but there are periods, and these the 
periods, for the most part, of greatest interest to mankind, the 
history of which may be so written that the actors shall reveal 
their characters in their own words ; where mind can be seen 
matched against mind, and the great passions of the epoch not 
simply be described as existing, but be exhibited at their white 
heat in the souls and hearts possessed by them. There are all 
the elements of drama — drama of the highest order — where 
the huge forces of the times are as the Grecian destiny, and the 
power of the man is seen either stemming the stream till it 
overwhelms him, or ruling while he seems to yield to it. 

It is Nature's drama, — not Shakespeare's, but a drama none 
the less. 

So at least it seems to me. Wherever possible, let us not be 
told about this man or that. Let us hear the man himself speak. 



282 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

let us see him act, and let us be left to form our own opinions 
about him. The historian, we are told, must not leave his read- 
ers to themselves. He must not only lay the facts before them : 
he must tell them what he himself thinks about those facts. In 
my opinion, this is precisely what he ought not to do. Bishop 
Butler says somewhere, that the best book which could be writ- 
ten would be a book consisting only of premises, from which the 
readers should draw conclusions for themselves. The highest 
poetry is the very thing which Butler requires, and the highest 
history ought to be. We should no more ask for a theory of this 
or that period of history, than we should ask for a theory of 
" Macbeth " or " Hamlet." Philosophies of history, sciences of 
history, — all these there will continue to be : the fashions of 
them will change, as our habits of thought will change , each 
new philosopher will find his chief employment in showing that 
before him no one understood any thing ; but the drama of his- 
tory is imperishable, and the lessons of it will be like what we 
learn from Homer or Shakespeare, — lessons for which we have 
no words. 

The address of history is less to the understanding than to 
the higher emotions. We learn in it to sympathize with what is 
great and good ; we learn to hate what is base. In the anoma- 
lies of fortune we feel the mystery of our mortal existence ; and 
in the companionship of the illustrious natures who have shaped 
the Jortunes of the world, we escape from the littlenesses which 
cling to the round of common life, and our minds are tuned in 
a higher and nobler key. 

For the rest, and for those large questions which I touched in 
connection with Mr. Buckle, we live in times of disintegration, 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 283 

and none can tell what will be after us. What opinions, what 
convictions, the infant of to-day will find prevailing on the earth, 
if he and it live out together to the middle of another century, 
only a very bold man would undertake to conjecture. " The 
time will come," said Lichtenberg, in scorn at the materializing 
tendencies of modern thought, — " the time will come when the 
belief in God will be as the tales with which old women frighten 
children ; when the world will be a machine, the ether a gas, and 
God will be a force." Mankind, if they last long enough on 
the earth, may develop strange things out of themselves ; and 
the growth of what is called the Positive Philosophy is a curious 
commentary on Lichtenberg's prophecy. But whether the end 
be seventy years hence, or seven hundred, — be the close of the 
mortal history of humanity as far distant in the future as its 
shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us, — this only we 
may foretell with confidence, — that the riddle of man's nature 
will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which phys- 
ical laws will fail to explain, — that something, whatever it be, 
in himself and in the world, which science cannot fathom, and 
which suggests the unknown possibilities of his origin and his 
destiny. There will remain yet 

" Those obstinate questionings 

Of sense and outward things ; 

Falling from us, vanishing; 

Blank misgivings of a creature 

Moving about in worlds not realized; 
High instincts, before which our mortal nature 

Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised." 

There will remain 

" Those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections, 



1 



284 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 

Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, — 
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing, — 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the Eternal Silence." 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 



BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

(Born 1S23.) 




T is no very great time since the readers of the 
English newspapers were, perhaps a Httle amused, 
perhaps a little startled, at the story of a deputation 
of Hungarian students going to Constantinople to 
present a sword of honor to an Ottoman general. The address 
and the answer enlarged on the ancient kindred of Turks and 
Magyars, on the long alienation of the dissevered kinsfolk, on 
the return of both in these later times to a remembrance of the 
ancient kindred and to the friendly feelings to which such kin- 
dred gave birth. The discourse has a strange sound when we 
remember the reigns of Sigismund and Wladislaus, when we 
think of the dark days of Nikopolis and Varna, when we think 
of Huniades encamped at the foot of Haemus, and of Belgrade 
beating back Mahomet the Conqueror from her gates. The 
Magyar and the Ottoman embracing with the joy of reunited 
kinsfolk is a sight which certainly no man would have looked 
forward to in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. At an earlier 

28s 



II 



286 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

time the ceremony might have seemed a degree less wonderful. 
If a man whose ideas are drawn wholly from the modern map 
should sit down to study the writings of Constantine Porphyro- 
gennetos, he would perhaps be startled at finding Turks and 
Franks spoken of as neighbors, at finding Turcia and Francia 
— we must not translate Tougstla and *I>Qayyiu by Turkey and 
France — spoken of as border-lands. A little study will perhaps 
show him that the change lies almost wholly in the names and 
not in the boundaries. The lands are there still, and the fron- 
tier between them has shifted much less than one might have 
looked for in nine hundred years. Nor has there been any 
great change in the population of the two countries. The 
Turks and the Franks of the Imperial geographer are there still, 
in the lands which he calls Turcia and Francia ; only we no 
longer speak of them as Turks and Franks. The Turks of 
Constantine are Magyars ; the Franks of Constantine are Ger- 
mans. The Magyar students may not unlikely have turned 
over the Imperial pages, and they may have seen how their fore- 
fathers stand described there. We can hardly fancy that the 
Ottoman general is likely to have given much time to lore of 
such a kind. Yet the Ottoman answer was as brim full of 
ethnological and antiquarian sympathy as the Magyar address. 
It is hardly to be believed that a Turk, left to himself, would by 
his own efforts have found out the primeval kindred between 
Turk and Magyar. He might remember that Magyar exiles 
had found a safe shelter on Ottoman territory ; he might look 
deep enough into the politics of the present moment to see that 
the rule of Turk and Magyar alike is threatened by the growth 
of Slavonic national life. But the idea that Magyar and Turk 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 287 

owe each other any love or any ckity, directly on the ground of 
primeval kindred, is certainly not likely to have presented itself 
to the untutored Ottoman mind. In short, it sounds, as some 
one said at the time, rather like the dream of a professor who 
has run wild with an ethnological craze, than like the serious 
thought of a practical man of any nation. Yet the Magyar 
students seem to have meant their address quite seriously. And 
the Turkish general, if he did not take it seriously, at least 
thought it wise to shape his answer as if he did. As a piece of 
practical politics, it sounds like Frederick Barbarossa threaten- 
ing to avenge the defeat of Crassus upon Saladin, or like the 
French of the revolutionary wars making the Pope Pius of those 
days answerable for the wrongs of Vercingetorix. The thing 
sounds like comedy, almost like conscious comedy. But it is a 
kind of comedy which may become tragedy, if the idea from 
which it springs get so deeply rooted in men's minds as to lead 
to any practical consequences. As long as talk of this kind 
does not get beyond the world of iiot-headed students, it may 
pass for a craze. It would be more than a craze, if it should be 
so widely taken up on either side that the statesmen on either 
side find it expedient to profess to take it up also. 

To allege .the real or supposed primeval kindred between 
Magyars and Ottomans as a ground for political action, or at 
least for political sympathy, in the affairs of the present mo 
ment, is an extreme case — some may be inclined to call it a 
rcductio ad absurdu77i ■ — of a whole range of doctrines and senti- 
ments which have in modern days gained a great power over 
men's minds. They have gained so great a power that those 
who may regret their influence cannot afford to despise it. To 



288 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

make any practical inference from the primeval kindred of 
Magyar and Turk is indeed pushing the doctrine of race, and 
of sympathies arising from race, as far as it well can be pushed. 
Without plunging into any very deep mysteries, without commit- 
ting ourselves to any dangerous theories in the darker regions 
of ethnological inquiry, we may perhaps bfe allowed at starting 
to doubt whether there is any real primeval kindred between the 
Ottoman and the Finnish Magyar. It is for those who have 
gone specially deep into the antiquities of the non-Aryan races to 
say whether there is or is not. At all events, as far as the great 
facts of history go, the kindred is of the vaguest and most 
shadowy kind. It comes to little more than the fact that Mag- 
yars and Ottomans are alike non-Aryan invaders who have 
made their way into Europe within recorded times, and that 
both, have, rightly or wrongly, been called by the name of 
Turks These do seem rather slender grounds on which to 
build up a fabric of national sympathy between two nations, 
when several centuries of living practical history all pull the 
other way. It is hard to believe that the kindred of Turk and 
Magyar was thought of when a Turkish Pasha ruled at Buda. 
Doubtless Hungarian Protestants often deemed, and not unrea- 
sonably deemed, that the contemptuous toleration of the Moslem 
Sultan was a lighter yoke than the persecution of the Catholic 
Emperor. But it was hardly on grounds of primeval kindred 
that they made the choice. The ethnological dialogue held at 
Constantinople does indeed sound like ethnological theory run 
mad. But it is the very wildness of the thing which gives it its 
importance. The doctrine of race, and of sympathies springing 
from race, must have taken very firm hold indeed of men's 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 289 

minds before it could be carried out in a shape which we are 
tempted to call so grotesque as this. 

The plain fact is that the new lines of scientific and historical 
inquiry which have been opened in modern times have had a 
distinct and deep effect upon the politics of the age. The fact 
may be estimated in many ways, but its existence as a fact cannot 
be denied. Not i:i a merely scientific or literary point of view, 
but in one strictly practical, the world is not the same world as 
it was when men had not yet dreamed of the kindred between 
Sanscrit, Greek, and English, when it was looked on as some- 
thing of a paradox to hint that there was a distinction between 
Celtic and Teutonic tongues and nations. Ethological and 
philological researches — I do not forget the distinction between 
the two, but for the present I must group them together — have 
opened the way for new national sympathies, new national antip- 
athies, such as would have been unintelligible a hundred years 
ago. A hundred years ago a man's political likes and dislikes 
seldom went beyond the range which was suggested by the place 
of his birth or immediate descent. Such birth or descent made 
him a member of this or that political community, a subject of 
this or that prince, a citizen — perhaps a subject — of this or 
that commonwealth. The political community of which he was 
a member had its traditional alliances and traditional enmities, 
and by those alliances and enmities the likes and dislikes of 
the members of that community were guided. But those tradi- 
tional alliances and enmities were seldom determined by theories 
about language or race. The people of this or that place might 
be discontented under a foreign government ; but, as a rule, they 
were discontented only if subjection to that foreign government 



290 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

brought with it personal oppression, or at least political degrada- 
tion. Regard or disregard of some purely local privilege or 
local feeling went for more than the fact of a government being 
native or foreign. What we now call the sentiment of national- 
ity did not go for much ; what we call the sentiment of race 
went for nothing at all. Only a few men here and there would 
have understood the feelings which have led to those two great 
events of our own time, the political reunion of the German and 
Italian nations after their long political dissolution. Not a soul 
would have understood the feelings which have allowed Panslav- 
ism to be a great practical agent in the affairs of Europe, and 
w^hich have made talk about " the Latin race," if not practical, 
at least possible. Least of all, would it have been possible to 
give any touch of political importance to what would have then 
seemed so wild a dream as a primeval kindred between Magyar 
and Ottoman. 

That feelings such as these, and the practical consequences 
which have flowed from them, are distinctly due to scientific and 
historical teaching there can, I think, be no doubt. Religious 
sympathy and purely national sympathy are both feelings of 
much simpler growth, which need no deep knowledge nor any 
special teaching. The cry which resounded through Christen- 
dom when the Holy City was taken by the Mussulmans, the cry 
which resounded through Islam when the same city was taken 
by^the Christians, the spirit which armed England to support 
French Huguenots and which armed Spain to support French 
Leaguers, all spring from motives which lie on the surface. Nor 
need we seek for any explanation but such as lies on the surface 
for the natural wish for closer union which arose among Germans 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 



291 



or Italians who found themselves parted off by purely dynastic 
arrangements from men who were their countrymen in everything 
else. Such a feeling has to strive with the counter-feeling which 
springs from local jealousies and local dislikes ; but it is a 
perfectly simple feeling, which needs no subtle research either 
to arouse or to understand it. So, if we draw our illustrations 
from the events of our own time, there is nothing but what is 
perfectly simple in the feeling which calls Russia, as the most 
powerful of Orthodox states, to the help of her Orthodox breth- 
ren everywhere, and which calls the members of the Orthodox 
Church everywhere to look to Russia as their protector. The 
feeling may have to strive against a crowd of purely political 
considerations, and by those purely political considerations it may 
be outweighed. But the feeling is in itself altogether simple 
and natural. So again, the people of Montenegro and of the 
neighboring lands in Herzegovina and by the Bocche of Cattaro 
feel themselves countrymen in ever}?^ sense but the political 
accident which keeps them asunder. They are drawn together 
by a tie which every one can understand, by the same tie which 
would draw together the people of three adjoining English 
counties, if any strange political action should part them asunder 
in like manner. The feeling here is that of nationality in the 
strictest sense, nationality in a purely local or geographical 
sense. It would exist all the same if Panslavism had never 
been heard of ; it might exist though those who feel it had never 
heard of the Slavonic race at all. It is altogether another thing 
when we come to the doctrine of race, and of sympathies 
founded on race, in the wider sense. Here we have a feeling 
which professes to bind together, and which as a matter of fact 



292 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

has had a real effect in binding together, men whose kindred to 
one another is not so obvious at first sight as the kindred of 
Germans, Italians, or Serbs who are kept asunder by nothing but 
a purely artificial political boundary. It is a feeling at whose 
bidding the call to union goes forth to men whose dwellings are 
geographically far apart, to men who may have had no direct 
dealings with one another for years or for ages, to men whose 
languages, though the scholar may at once see that they are 
closely akin, may not be so closely akin as to be mutually intelli- 
gible for common purposes. A hundred years back the Servian 
might have cried for help to the Russian on the ground of 
common Orthodox faith ; he would hardly have called for help 
on the ground of common Slavonic speech and origin. If he 
had done so, it would have been rather by way of grasping at 
any chance, however desperate or far-fetched, than as putting 
forward a serious and well understood claim which he might 
expect to find accepted and acted on by large masses of men. 
He might have received help, either out of genuine sympathy 
springing from community of faith or from the baser thought 
that he could be made use of as a convenient political tool. He 
would have got but little help purely on the ground of a com- 
munity of blood and speech which had had no practical result 
for ages. When Russia in earlier days interfered between the 
Turk and his Christian subjects, there is no sign of any sym- 
pathy felt or possessed for Slavs as Slavs. Russia dealt with 
Montenegro, not, as far as one can see, out of any Slavonic 
brotherhood, but because an independent Orthodox state at 
enmity with the Turk could not fail to be a useful ally. The 
earlier dealings of Russia with the subject nations were far more 



il 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 293 

busy among the Greeks than among the Slavs. In fact, till quite 
lately, all the Orthodox subjects of the Turk were in most 
F.uropean eyes looked on as alike Greeks. The Orthodo.x 
Church has been commonly known as the Greek Church ; and 
it has often been very hard to make people understand that the 
vast mass of the members of that so-called Greek Church are 
not Greek in any other sense. In truth we may doubt whether, 
till comparatively lately, the subject nations themselves were 
fully alive to the differences of race and speech among them. 
A man must in all times and places know whether he speaks the 
same language as another man , but he does not always go on 
to put his consciousness of difference into the shape of a 
sharply drawn formula. Still less does he always make the 
difference the ground of any practical course of action. The 
Englishman in the first days of the Norman Conquest felt the 
hardships of foreign rule, and he knew that those hardships 
were owing to foreign rule. But he had not learned to put his 
sense of hardship into any formula about an oppressed nation- 
ality. So, when the policy of the Turk found that the subtle 
intellect of the Greek could be made use of as an instrument of 
dominion over the other subject nations, the Bulgarian felt the 
hardship of the state of things in which, as it was proverbially 
said, his body was in bondage to the Turk and his soul in bond- 
age to the Greek. But we may suspect that this neatly turned 
proverb dates only from the awakening of a distinctly national 
Bulgarian feeling in modern times. The Turk was feU to be an 
intruder and an enemy, because his rule was that of an open 
oppressor belonging to another creed. The Greek, on the other 
hand, though his spiritual dominion brought undoubted practical 



f 



294 ED WARD A. freeman: 

evils with it, was not felt to be an intruder and an enemy in the 
same sense. His quicker intellect and superior refinement made 
him a model. The Bulgarian imitated the Greek tongue and 
Greek manners ; he was willing in other lands to be himself 
looked on as a Greek. It is only in quite modern times, under 
the direct influence of the preaching of the doctrine of race, 
that a hard and fast line has been drawn between Greeks and 
Bulgarians That doctrine has cut two ways. It has given both 
nations, Greek and Bulgarian alike, a renewed national life, 
national strength, national hopes, such as neither of them had 
felt for ages. In so domg, it has done one of the best and most 
hopeful works of the age. But in so doing, it has created one 
of the most dangerous of immediate political difficulties. In 
calling two nations into a renewed being, it has arrayed them in 
enmity against each other, and that in the face of a common 
enemy in whose presence all lesser differences and jealousies 
ought to be hushed into silence. 

There is then a distinct doctrine of race, and of sympathies 
founded on race, distinct from the feeling of community of 
religion, and distinct from the feeling of nationality in the nar- 
rower sense. It is not so simple or easy a feeling as either of 
those two. It does not in the same way lie on the surface ; it is 
not in the same way grounded on obvious facts which are plain 
to every man's understanding. The doctrine of race is essen- 
tially an artificial doctrine, a learned doctrine. It is an infer- 
ence from facts which the mass of mankind could never have 
found out for themselves ; facts which, without a distinctly 
learned teaching, could never be brought home to them in any 
intelligible shape. Now what is the value of such a doctrine ? 



RACE AND LAjVGUAGE. 295 

Does it follow that, because it is confessedly artificial, because 
it springs, not from a spontaneous impulse, but from a learned 
teaching, it is therefore necessarily foolish, mischievous, perhaps 
unnatural ? It may perhaps be safer to hold that, like many 
other doctrines, many other sentiments, it is neither universally 
good nor universally bad, neither inherently wise nor inherently 
foolish. It may be safer to hold that it may, like other doc- 
trines and sentiments, have a range within which it may work 
for good, while in some other range it may work for evil. It 
may in short be a doctrine which is neither to be rashly accepted, 
nor rashly cast aside, but one which may need to be guided, 
regulated, modified, according to time, place, and circumstance. 
I am not now called on so much to estimate the practical good 
and evil of the doctrine as to work out what the doctrine itself 
is, and to try to explain some difficulties about it, but I must 
emphatically say that nothing can be more shallow, nothing 
more foolish, nothing more purely sentimental, than the talk of 
those who think that they can simply laugh down or shriek down 
any doctrine or sentiment which they themselves do not under- 
stand. A belief or a feeling which has a practical effect on the 
conduct of great masses of men, sometimes on the conduct of 
whole nations, may be very false and very mischievous ; but it 
is in every case a great and serious fact, to be looked gravely in 
the face. Men who sit at their ease and think that all wisdom 
is confined to themselves and their own clique may think them- 
selves vastly superior to the great emotions which stir our times, 
as they would doubtless have thought themselves vastly superior 
to the emotions which stirred the first Saracens or the first Cru- 
saders. But the emotions are there all the same, and they do 



296 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

their work all the same. The most highly educated man in the 
most highly educated society cannot sneer them out of being. 

But it is time to pass to the more strictly scientific aspect of 
the subject. The doctrine of race, in its popular form, is the 
direct offspring of the study of scientific philology; and yet it is 
just now, in its popular form at least, somewhat under the ban 
of scientific philologers. There is nothing very wonderful in 
this. It is in fact the natural course of things which might 
almost have been reckoned on beforehand. When the popular 
mind gets hold of a truth, it seldom gets hold of it with strict 
scientific precision. It commonly gets hold of one side of the 
truth ; it puts forth that side of the truth only. It puts that side 
forth in a form which may not be in itself distorted or exag- 
gerated, but which practically becomes distorted and exagger- 
ated, because other sides of the same truth are not brought 
into their due relation with it. The popular idea thus takes a 
shape which is naturally offensive to men of strict precision, and 
which men of strict scientific precision have naturally, and from 
their own point of view quite rightly, risen up to rebuke. Yet 
it may often happen that, while the scientific statement is the 
only true one for scientific purposes, the popular version may 
also have a kind of practical truth for the somewhat rough and 
ready purposes of a popular version. In our present case sci- 
entific philologers are beginning to complain, with perfect truth 
and perfect justice from their own point of view, that the popu- 
lar doctrine of race confounds race and language. They tell 
us, and they do right to tell us, that language is no certain test 
of race, that men who speak the same tongue are not therefore 
necessarily men of the same blood. And they tell us further, 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 297 

that from whatever quarter the alleged popular confusion came, 
it certainly did not come from any teaching of scientific philcl- 
ogers. 

The truth of all this cannot be called in question. We have 
too many instances in recorded history of nations laying aside 
the use of one language and taking to the use of another, for 
any one who cares for accuracy to set down language as any 
sure test of race. In fact, the studies of the philologer and 
those of the ethnologer strictly so called are quite distinct, and 
they deal with two wholly different sets of phenomena. The 
science of the ethnologer is strictly a physical science. He has 
to deal with purely physical phenomena ; his business lies with 
the different varieties of the human body, and specially, to take 
that branch of his inquiries which most impresses the unlearned, 
with the various conformations of the human skull. His 
researches differ in nothing from those of the zoologist or the 
palaeontologist, except that he has to deal with the physical 
phenomena of man, w^hile they deal with the physical phenomena 
of other animals. He groups the different races of men, 
exactly as the others group the genera and species of living or 
extinct mammals or reptiles. The student of ethnology as a 
physical science may indeed strengthen his conclusions by evi- 
(dence of other kinds, evidence from arms, ornaments, pottery, 
modes of burial. But all these are secondary ; the primary 
ground of classification is the physical conformation of man 
himself. As to language, the ethnological method, left to itself, 
can find out nothing whatever. The science of the ethnologer 
then is primarily physical ; it is historical only in that secondar}' 
sense in which palaeontology, and geology itself, may fairly be 



298 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

called historical. It arranges the varieties of mankind according 
to a strictly physical classification ; what the language of each 
variety may have been, it leaves to the professors of another 
branch of study to find out. 

The science of the philologer, on the other hand, is strictly 
historical. There is doubtless a secondary sense in which purely 
philological science may be fairly called physical, just as there 
is a secondary sense in which pure ethnology may be called his- 
torical. That is to say, philology has to deal with physical 
phenomena, so far as it has to deal with the physical aspect of 
the sounds of which human language is made up. Its primary 
business, like the primary business of any other historical sci- 
ence, is to deal with phenomena which do not depend on 
physical laws, but which do depend on the human will. The 
science of language is, in this respect, like the science of human 
institutions or of human beliefs. Its subject-matter is not, like 
that of pure ethnology, what man is, but, like that of any other 
historical science, what man does. It is plain that no man's 
will can have any direct influence on the shape of his skull. I 
say no direct influence, because it is not for me to rule how far 
habits, places of abode, modes of life, a thousand things which 
do come under the control of the human will, may indirectly 
afifect the physical conformation of a man himself or of his 
descendants. Some observers have made the remark that men 
of civilized nations who live in a degraded social state do actu- 
ally approach to the physical type of inferior races. However this 
may be, it is quite certain, that as no man can by taking thought 
add a cubit to his stature, so no man can by taking thought 
make his skull brachycephalic or dolichocephalic. But the 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 



299 



language which a man speaks does depend upon his will ; he can 
by taking thought make his speech Romance or Teutonic. No 
doubt he has in most cases practically no choice in the matter. 
The language which he speaks is practically determined for him 
by fashion, habit, early teaching, a crowd of things over which 
he has practically no control. But still the control is not physi- 
cal and inevitable, as it is in the case of the shape of his skull. 
If we say that he cannot help speaking in a particular way; that 
is, that he cannot help speaking a particular language, this sim- 
j^ly means that his circumstances are such that no other way of 
speaking presents itself to his mind. And in many cases, he has 
a real choice between two or more ways of speaking ; that is, 
between two or more languages. Every word that a man speaks 
is the result of a real, though doubtless unconscious, act of his 
free will. We are apt to speak of gradual changes in language, as 
in institutions or anything else, as if they were the result of a 
physical law, acting upon beings who had no choice in the 
matter. Yet every change of the kind is simply the aggregate 
of various acts of the will on the part of all concerned. Every 
change in speech, every introduction of a new sound or a new 
word, was really the result of an act of the will of some one 
or other. The choice may have been unconscious ; circum- 
stances may have been such as practically to give him but one 
choice ; still he did choose ; he spoke in one way, when there was 
no physical hindrance to his speaking in another way, when 
there was no physical compulsion to speak at all. The Gauls 
need not have changed their own language for Latin ; the 
change was not the result of a physical necessity, but of a num- 
ber of acts of the will on the part of this and that Gaul. Moral 



300 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

causes directed their choice, and determined that Gaul should 
become a Latin-speaking land. But whether the skulls of the 
Gauls should be long or short, whether their hair should be 
black or yellow, those were points over which the Gauls them- 
selves had no direct control whatever. 

The study of men's skulls then is a study which is strictly 
physical, a study of facts over which the will of man has no 
direct control. The study of men's languages is strictly an his- 
torical study, a study of facts over which the will of man has a 
direct control. It follows therefore from the very nature of the 
two studies that language cannot be an absolutely certain test of 
physical descent. A man cannot, under any circumstances, 
choose his own skull ; he may, under some circumstances, 
choose his own language. He must keep the skull which has 
been given him by his parents ; he cannot, by any process of 
taking thought, (ietermine what kind of skull he will hand on to 
his own children. But he may give up the use of the language 
which he has learned from his parents, and he may determine 
what language he will teach to his children. The physical 
characteristics of a race are unchangeable, or are changed only 
by influences over which the race itself has no direct control. 
The language which the race speaks may be changed, either by 
a conscious act of the will or by that power of fashion which is 
in truth the aggregate of countless unconscious acts of the will. 
And,, as the very nature of the case thus shows that language is 
no sure test of race, so the facts of recorded history equally 
prove the same truth. Both individuals and whole nations do 
in fact often exchange the language of their forefathers for some 
other language. A man settles in a foreign country. He learns 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 3OI 

the language of that country ; sometimes he forgets the use of 
his own language. His children may perhaps speak both 
tongues ; if they speak one tongue only, it will be the tongue of 
the country where they live. In a generation or two all trace of 
foreign origin will have passed away. Here then language is no 
test of race. If the great-grandchildren speak the language of 
their great-grandfathers, it will simply be as they may speak any 
other foreign language. Here are men who by speech belong to 
one nation, by actual descent to another. If they lose the 
physical characteristics of the race to which the original settler 
belonged, it will be due to intermarriage, to climate, to some 
cause altogether independent of language. Every nation will 
have some adopted children of this kind, more or fewer ; men 
who belong to it by speech, but who do not belong to it by 
race. And what happens in the case of individuals happens in 
the case of whole nations. The pages of history are crowded 
with cases in which nations have cast aside the tongue of their 
forefathers, and have taken instead the tongue of some other 
people. Greek in the East, Latin in the West, became the 
familiar speech of millions who had not a drop of Greek 
or Italian blood in their veins. The same has been the 
case in later times with Arabic, Persian, Spanish, German, 
English. Each of those tongues has • become the familiar 
speech of vast regions where the mass of the people are not 
Arabian, Spanish, or English, otherwise than by adoption. The 
Briton of Cornwall has, slowly but in the end thoroughly, 
adopted the speech of England. In the American continent full- 
blooded Indians preside over commonwealths which speak the 
tongue of Cortes and Pizarro. In the lands to which all eyes 



302 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

are now turned, the Greek, who has been busily assimilating 
strangers ever since he first planted his colonies in Asia and 
Sicily, goes on busily assimilating his Albanian neighbors. And 
between renegades, janissaries, and mothers of all nations, the 
blood of many a Turk must be physically anything rather than 
Turkish. The inherent nature of the case, and the witness of 
recorded history, join together to prove that language is no 
certain test of race, and that the scientific philologers are doing 
good service to accuracy of expression and accuracy of thought 
by emphatically calling attention to the fact that language is no 
such test. 

But, on the other hand, it is quite possible that the truth to 
■which our attention is just now most fittingly called may, if put 
forth too broadly and without certain qualifications, lead to error 
quite as great as the error at which it is aimed. I do not sup- 
pose that any one ever thought that language was, necessarily 
and in all cases, an absolute and certain test. If anybody does 
think so, he has put himself altogether out of court by shutting 
his eyes to the most manifest facts of the case. But there can 
be no doubt that many people have given too much importance 
to language as a test of race. Though they have not wholly 
forgotten the facts which tell the other way, they have not 
brought them out with enough prominence. But I can also 
believe that many people have written and spoken on the sub- 
ject in a way which cannot be justified from a strictly scientific 
point of view, but which may have been fully justified from the 
point of view of the writers and speakers themselves. It may 
often happen that a way of speaking may not be scientifically 
accurate, but may yet be quite near enough to the truth for the 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 303 

purposes of the matter in hand. It may, for some practical or 
even historical purpose, be really more true than the statement 
which is scientifically more exact. Language is no certain test 
of race ; but if a man, struck by this wholesome warning, should 
run off into the belief that language and race have absolutely 
nothing to do with one another, he had better have gone without 
the warning. For in such a case the last error would be worse 
than the first. The natural instinct of mankind connects race 
and language. It does not assume that language is an infallible 
test of race ; but it does assume that language and race have 
something to do with one another. It assumes, that though 
language is not an accurately scientific test of race, yet it is a 
rough and ready test which does for many practical purposes. 
To make something more of an exact definition, one might say, 
that though language is not a test of race, it is, in the absence 
of evidence to the contrary, a presumption of race ; that though 
it is not a test of race, yet it is a test of something which, for 
many practical purposes, is the same as race. 

Professor Max Miiller warned us long ago that we must not 
speak of a Celtic skull. Mr. Sayce has more lately warned us 
that we must not infer from community of Aryan speech that 
there is any kindred in blood between this or that Englishman 
and this or that Hindoo. And both warnings are scientifically 
true. Yet any one who begins his studies on these matters with 
Professor Miiller's famous Oxford Essay will practically come to 
another way of looking at things. He will fill his mind with a 
vivid picture of the great Aryan family, as yet one, dwelling in 
one place, speaking one tongue, having already taken the first 
steps toward settled society, recognizing the domestic relations, 



304 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

possessing the first rudiments of government and religion, and 
calling all these first elements of culture by names of which ■{ 
traces still abide here and there among the many nations of the 
common stock. He will go on to draw pictures equally vivid of 
the several branches of the family parting off from the primeval 
home. One great branch he will see going to the south-east, to 
become the forefathers of the vast, yet isolated colony in the 
Asiatic lands of Persia and India. He watches the remaining 
mass sending off wave after wave, to become the forefathers of 
the nations of historical Europe. He traces out how each 
branch starts with its own share of the common stock — how the 
language, the creed, the institutions, once common to all, grow 
up into different, yet kindred, shapes, among the many parted 
branches which grew up, each with an independent life and 
strength of its own. This is what our instructors set before us 
as the true origin of nations and their languages. And, in 
drawing out the picture, we cannot 'avoid, our teachers them- 
selves do not avoid, the use of words which imply that the 
strictly family relation, the relation of community of blood, is at 
the root of the whole matter. We cannot help talking about the 
family and its branches, about parents, children, brothers, sis- 
ters, cousins. The nomenclature of natural kindred exactly fits 
the case ; it fits it so exactly that no other nomenclature could 
enable us to set forth the case with any clearness. Yet we can- 
not be absolutely certain that there was any real community of 
blood in the whole story. We really know nothing of the origin 
of language or the origin of society. We may make a thousand 
ingenious guesses ; but we cannot prove any of them. It may 
be that the group which came together, and which formed the 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 305 

primeval society which spoke the primeval Aryan tongue, were 
not brought together by community of blood, but by some other 
cause which threw them in one another's way. If we accept the 
Hebrew genealogies, they need not have had any community of 
blood nearer than common descent from Adam and Noah. 
That is, they need not have been all children of Shem, of Ham, 
or of Japheth ; some children of Shem, some of Ham, and some 
of Japheth may have been led by some cause to settle together. 
Or if we believe in independent creations of men, or in the 
development of men out of mollusks, the whole of the original 
society need not have been descendants of the same man or the 
same mollusk. In short, there is no theory of the origin of man 
which requires us to believe that the primeval Aryans were a 
natural family; they may have been more like an accidental 
party of fellow-travellers. And if we accept them as a natural 
family, it does not follow that the various branches which grew 
into separate races and nations, speaking separate though kin- 
dred languages, were necessarily marked off by more immediate 
kindred. It may be that there is no nearer kindred in blood 
between this or that Persian, this or that Greek, this or that 
Teuton, than the general kindred of all Aryans. For, when 
this or that party marched off from the common home, it does 
follow that those who marched off together were necessarily 
immediate brothers or cousins. The party which grew into 
Hindoos or Teutons may not have been made up exclusively of 
one set of near kinsfolk. Some of the children of the same 
parents or forefathers may have marched one way, while others 
marched another way, or stayed behind. We may, if we please, 
indulge our fancy by conceiving that there may actually be 

/ 



306 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

family distinctions older than distinctions of nation and race. 
It may be that the Gothic Amali and the Roman yEmilii — I 
throw out the idea as a mere illustration — were branches of a 
family which had taken a name before the division of Teuton and 
Italian. Some of the members of that family may have joined 
the band of which came the Goths, while other members joined 
the band of which came the Romans. There is no difference 
but the length of time to distinguish such a supposed case from 
the case of an English family, one branch of which settled in 
the seventeenth century at Boston in Massachusetts, while 
another branch stayed behind at Boston in Holland. Mr. Sayce 
says truly that the use of a kindred language does not prove 
that the Englishman and the Hindoo are really akin in race ; 
for, as he adds, many Hindoos are men of non-Aryan race who 
have simply learned to speak tongues of Sanscrit origin. He 
might have gone on to say, with equal truth, that there is no 
positive certainty that there was any community in blood among 
the original Aryan group itself, and that if we admit such com- 
munity of blood in the original Aryan group, it does not follow 
that there is any further special kindred between Hindoo and 
Hindoo or between Englishman and Englishman. The original 
group may not have been a family, but an artificial union. And 
if it was a family, those of its members who marched together 
east or west or north or south may have had no tie of kindred 
beyond the common cousinship of all. 

Now the tendency of this kind of argument is to lead to some- 
thing a good deal more startling than the doctrine that language 
is no certain test of race. Its tendency is to go on further, and 
to show that race is no certain test of community of blood. 



i 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 307 

And this comes pretty nearly to saying tliat there is no such 
thing as race at all. For our whole conception of race starts 
from the idea of community of blood. If the word "race " does 
not mean community of blood, it is hard to see what it does 
mean. Yet it is certain that there can be no positive proof of 
real community of blood, even among those groups of mankind 
which we instinctively speak of as families and races. It is not 
merely that the blood has been mingled in after-times ; there is 
no positive proof that there was any community of blood in the 
beginning. No living Englishman can prove with absolute 
certainty that he comes in the male line of any of the Teutonic 
settlers in Britain in the fifth or sixth centuries. I say in the 
male line, because any one who is descended from any English 
king can prove such descent, though he can prove it only through 
a long and complicated web of female successions. But we 
may be sure that in no other case can such a pedigree be proved 
by the kind of proof which lawyers would require to make out 
the title to an estate or a peerage. The actual forefathers of 
the modern Englishman may chance to have been, not true-born 
Angles or Saxons, but Britons, Scots, in later days Frenchmen, 
Flemings, men of any other nation who learned to speak Eng- 
lish and took to themselves English names. But supposing that 
a man could make out such a pedigree, supposing that he 
could prove that he came in the male line of some follower of 
Hengest or Cerdic, he would be no nearer to proving original 
community of blood either in the particular Teutonic race or hi 
the general Aryan family. If direct evidence is demanded, we 
must give up the whole doctrine of families and races, as far as 
we take language, manners, institutions, any thing but physical 



308 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

conformation, as the distinguishing marks of races and families. 
That is to say, if we wish never to use any word of whose accu- 
racy we cannot be perfectly certain, we must leave off speaking 
of races and families at all from any but the purely physical 
side. We must content ourselves with saying that certain 
groups of mankind have a common history, that they have 
languages, creeds, and institutions in common, but that we have 
no evidence whatever to show how they came to have languages, 
creeds, and institutions in common. We cannot say for certain 
what was the tie which brought the members of the original 
group together, any more than we can name the exact time and 
the exact place when and where they came together. 

We may thus seem to be landed in a howling wilderness of 
scientific uncertainty. The result of pushing our inquiries so 
far may seem to be to show that we really know nothing at all. 
But in truth the uncertainty is no greater than the uncertainty 
which attends all inquiries in the historical sciences. Though a 
historical fact may be recorded in the most trustworthy docu- 
ments, though it may have happened in our own times, though 
we may have seen it happen with our own eyes, yet we cannot 
have the same certainty about it as the mathematician has 
about the proposition which he proves to absolute demonstra- 
tion. We cannot have even that lower degree of certainty which 
the geologist has with regard to the order of succession between 
this and that stratum. For in all historical inquiries we are 
dealing with facts which themselves come within the control of 
human will and human caprice, and the evidence for which 
depends on the trustworthiness of human informants, who may 
either purposely deceive or unwittingly mislead. A man may 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 



309 



lie ; he may err. The triangles and the rocks can neither lie 
nor err. I may with my own eyes see a certain man do a 
certain act ; he may tell me himself, or some one else may tell 
me that he is the same man who did some other act; but 
as to his statement I cannot have absolute certainty, and no 
one but myself can have absolute certainty as to the statement 
w'hich I make as to the facts which I saw with my own eyes. 
Historical evidence may range through every degree, from the 
barest likelihood to that undoubted moral certainty on which 
every man acts without hesitation in practical affairs. But it 
cannot get beyond this last standard. If, then, we are ever to 
use words like race, family, or even nation, to denote groups of 
mankind marked off by any kind of historical, as distinguished 
from physical, characteristics, we must be content to use those 
words, as we use many other words, without being able to prove 
that our use of them is accurate, as mathematicians judge of 
accuracy. I cannot be quite sure that William the Conqueror 
landed at Pevensey, though I have strong reasons for believing 
that he did so. And I have strong reasons for believing many 
facts about race and language about which I am much further 
from being quite sure than I am about William's landing at 
Pevensey. In short, in all these matters, we must be satisfied to 
let presumption very largely take the place of actual proof ; and, 
if we only let presumption in, most of our difficulties at once fly 
away. Language is no certain test of race ; but it is a presump- 
tion of race. Community of race, as we commonly understand 
race, is no certain proof of original community of blood ; but it 
is a presumption of original community of blood. The pre- 
sumption amounts to moral proof, if only we do not insist on 



3IO EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

proving such physical community of blood as would satisfy a 
genealogist. It amounts to moral proof, if all that we seek is 
to establish a relation in which the community of blood is the 
leading idea, and in which, where natural community of blood 
does not exist, its place is supplied by something which by a 
legal fiction is looked upon as its equivalent. 

If, then, we do not ask for scientific, for what we may call 
physical, accuracy, but if we are satisfied with the kind of proof 
which is all that we can ever get in the historical sciences — if 
we are satisfied to speak in a way which is true for popular and 
practical purposes — then we may say that language has a great 
deal to do with race, as race is commonly understood, and that 
race has a great deal to do with community of blood. If we 
once admit the Roman doctrine of adoption, our whole course 
is clear. The natural family is the starting-point of every thing; 
but we must give the natural family the power of artificially 
enlarging itself by admitting adoptive members. A group of 
mankind is thus formed, in which it does not follow that all the 
members have any natural community of blood, but in which 
community of blood is the starting-point, in which those who are 
connected by natural community of blood form the original body 
within whose circle the artificial members are admitted. A 
group of mankind thus formed is something quite different from 
a fortuitous concurrence of atoms. Three or four brothers by 
blood, with a fourth or fifth man whom they agree to look on as 
filling in every thing the same place as a brother by blood, form 
a group which is quite unlike a union of four or five men, none 
of whom is bound by any tie of blood to any of the others. In 
the latter kind of union the notion of kindred does not come in 



RACE A,ND LANGUAGE. 3II 

at all. In the former kind the notion of kindred is the ground- 
work of every thing ; it determines the character of every rela- 
tion and every action, even though the kindred between some 
members of the society and others may be owing to a legal fiction 
and not to natural descent. All that we know of the growth of 
tribes, races, nations, leads us to believe that they grew in this 
way. Natural kindred was the groundwork, the leading and 
determining idea ; but, by one of those legal fictions which have 
had such an influence on all institutions, adoption was in certain 
cases allowed to count as natural kindred.^ 

The usage of all languages shows that community of blood 
was the leading idea in forming the greater and smaller groups 
of mankind. Words like qpOAor, -/eVoc, ge?is, natio, km, all point 
to the natural family as the origin of all society. The family in 
the narrower sense, the children of one father in one house, 
grew into a more extended family, the gens. Such were the 
Alkmaionidai, the Julii, or the Scyldingas, the real or artificial 
descendants of a real or supposed forefather. The nature of 
the gens has been set forth often enough. If it is a mistake to 
fancy that every Julius or Cornelius was the natural kinsman of 
every other Julius or Cornelius, it is equally a mistake to think 
that the gens Julia or Co7'nelia was in its origin a mere artificial 
association, into which the idea of natural kindred did not enter. 
It is indeed possible that really artificial gentes, groups of men 

' I am here applying to this particular purpose a line of thought which both myself 
and others have often applied to other purposes. See, above all, Sir Henry Maine's 
lecture on "-Kinslnp as the Basis of Society " in the lectures on the " Early History 
of Institutions;" I would refer also to my own lecture on "The State" in " Com- 
parative Politics." 



312 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

of whom it might chance that none were natural kinsmen, were 
formed in later times after the model of the original gentes. 
Still such imitation would bear witness to the original conception 
of the gens. It would be the doctrine of adoption turned the 
other way ; instead of a father adopting a son, a number of men 
would agree to adopt a common father. The family then grew 
into \\\Q gens ; the union of gentes formed the state, the political 
community, which in its first form was commonly a tribe. Then 
came the nation, formed of a union of tribes. Kindred, real or 
artificial, is the one basis on which all society and all govern- 
ment has grown up. 

Now it is plain, that as soon as we admit the doctrine of 
artificial kindred — that is, as soon as we allow the exercise of 
the law of adoption, physical purity of race is at an end. 
Adoption treats a man as if he were the son of a certain father; 
it cannot really make him the son of that father. If a brachy- 
cephalic father adopts a dolichocephalic son, the legal act can- 
not change the shape of the adopted son's skull, I will not 
undertake to say whether, not indeed the rite of adoption, but 
the influences and circumstances which would spring from it, 
might not, in the course of generations, affect even the skull of 
the man who entered a certain gens., tribe, or nation by artificial 
adoption only. If by any chance the adopted son spoke a 
different language from the adopted father, the rite of adoption 
itself^ would not of itself change his language. But it would 
bring him under influences which would make him adopt the 
language of his new gens by a conscious act of the will, and 
which would make his children adopt it by the same unconscious 
act of the will by which each child adopts the language of his 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 313 

parents. The adopted son, still more the son of the adopted 
son, became, in speech, in feelings, in worship, in every thing 
but physical descent, one with the gens into which he was 
adopted. He became one of that gens for all practical, political, 
historical, purposes. It is only the physiologist who could deny 
his right to his new position. The nature of the process is well 
expressed by a phrase of our own law. When the nation — the 
word itself keeps about it the remembrance of birth as the 
groundwork of every thing — adopts a new citizen, that is, a new 
child of the state, he is said to be naturalized. That is, a legal 
process puts him in the same position, and gives him the same 
rights, as a man who is a citizen and a son by birth. It is 
assumed that the rights of citizenship come by nature — that is, 
by birth. The stranger is admitted to them only by a kind of 
artificial birth ; he is naturalized bylaw; his children are in a 
generation or two naturalized in fact. There is now no practical 
distinction between the Englishman whose forefathers landed 
with William, or even between the Englishman whose forefathers 
sought shelter from Alva or from Louis the Fourteenth, and the 
Englishman whose forefathers landed with Hengest. It is for 
the physiologist to say whether any difference can be traced in 
their several skulls ; for all practical purposes, historical or 
political, all distinction between these several classes has passed 
away. 

We may, in short, say that the law of adoption runs through 
every thing, and that it may be practised on every scale. What 
adoption is at the hands of the family, naturalization is at the 
hands of the state. And the same process extends itself from 
adopted or naturalized individuals to large classes of men. 



314 EDWARD A. FREEMAN^. 

indeed to whole nations. When the process" takes place on this 
scale, we may best call it assimilation. Thus Rome assimilated 
the continental nations of Western Europe to that degree that, 
allowing for a few survivals here and there, not only Italy, but 
Gaul and Spain, became Roman. The people of those lands, 
admitted step by step to the Roman franchise, adopted the name 
and tongue of Romans. It must soon have been hard to dis- 
tinguish the Roman colonist in Gaul or Spain from the native 
Gaul or Spaniard who had, as far as in him lay, put on the 
guise of a Roman. This process of assimilation has gone on 
everywhere and at all times. When two nations come in this 
way into close contact with one another, it depends on a crowd 
of circumstances which shall assimilate the other, or whether 
they shall remain distinct without assimilation either wa3\ 
Sometimes the conquerors assimilate their subjects ; sometimes 
they are assimilated by their subjects ; sometimes conquerors 
and subjects remain distinct forever. When assimilation either 
way does take place, the direction which it takes in each partic- 
ular case will depend, partly on their respective numbers, partly 
on their degrees of civilization, A small number of less civil- 
ized conquerors will easily be lost among a greater number of 
more civilized subjects, and that even though they give their 
name to the land and people which they conquer. The modern 
Frenchman represents, not the conquering Frank, but the con- 
quered Gaul, or, as he called himself, the conquered Roman. 
The modern Bulgarian represents, not the Finnish conqueror, 
but the conquered Slav. The modern Russian represents, not 
the Scandinavian ruler, but the Slav who sent for the Scandina- 
vian to rule over him. And so we might go on with endless 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 315 

Other cases. The pohit is that the process of adoption, naturali- 
zation, assimilation, has gone on everywhere. No nation can 
boast of absolute purity of blood, though no doubt some nations 
come much nearer to it than others. When I speak of purity of 
blood, I leave out of sight the darker questions which I have 
already raised with regard to the groups of mankind in days 
before recorded history. I assume great groups like Celtic, 
Teutonic, Slavonic, as having what we may call a real corporate 
existence, however we may hold that that corporate existence 
began. My present point is that no existing nation is, in the 
physiologist's sense of purity, purely Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, 
or any thing else. All races have assimilated a greater or less 
amount of foreign elements. Taking this standard, one which 
comes more nearly within the range of our actual knowledge 
than the possibilities of unrecorded times, we may again say 
that, from the purely scientific or iDhysiological point of view, 
not only is language no test of race, but that, at all events 
among the great nations of the world, there is no such thing as 
purity of race at all. 

But, while we admit this truth, while we even insist upon it 
from the strictly scientific point of view, we must be allowed to 
look at it with different eyes from a more practical standing 
point. This is the standing point, whether of history which is 
the politics of the past, or of politics which are the history of 
the present. From this point of view, we may say unhesitatingly 
that there are such things as races and nations, and that to the 
grouping of those races and nations language is the best guide. 
We cannot undertake to define with any philosophical precision 
the exact distinction between race and race, between nation and 



3l6 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

nation. Nor can we undertake to define with the like precision 
in what way the distinctions between race and race, between 
nation and nation, began. But all analogy leads us to believe 
that tribes, nations, races, were all formed according to the 
original model of the family, the family which starts from the 
idea of the community of blood, but which allows artificial 
adoption to be its legal equivalent. In all cases of adoption, 
naturalization, assimilation, whether of individuals or of large 
classes of men, the adopted person or class is adopted into an 
existing community. Their adoption undoubtedly influences the 
community into which they are adopted. It at once destroys 
any claim on the part of that community to purity of blood, and 
it influences the adopting community in many ways, physical and 
moral. A family, a tribe, or a nation, which has largely 
recruited itself by adopted members, cannot be the same as one 
which has never practised adoption at all, but all whose mem- 
bers come of the original stock. But the influence which the 
adopting community exercises upon its adopted members is far 
greater than any influence which they exercise upon it. It 
cannot change their blood ; it cannot give them new natural 
forefathers ; but it may do every thing short of this ; it may 
make them, in speech, in feeling, in thought, and in habit, genu- 
ine members of the community which has artificially made them 
its own. While there is not in any nation, in any race, any such 
thing ,as strict purity of blood, yet there is in each nation, in 
each race, a dominant element — or rather something more than 
an element — something which is the true essence of the race or 
nation, something which sets its standard and determines its 
character, something which draws to itself and assimilates to 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 317 

itself all other elements. It so works that all other elements 
are not co-equal elements with itself, but mere infusions poured 
into an already existing body. Doubtless these infusions do in 
some measure influence the body which assimilates them ; but 
the influence which they exercise is as nothing compared to the 
influence which they undergo. We may say that they modify 
the character of the body into which they are assimilated ; they 
do not affect its personality. Thus, assuming the great groups 
of mankind as primary facts, the origin of which lies beyond our 
certain knowledge, we may speak of families and races, of the 
great Aryan family and of the races into which it parted, as 
groups which have a real, practical existence, as groups founded 
on the ruling primeval idea of kindred, even though in many 
cases the kindred may not be by natural descent, but only by 
law of adoption. The Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic races of man 
are real living and abiding groups, the distinction between which 
we must accept among the primary facts of history. And they 
go on as living and abiding groups, even though we know that 
each of them has assimilated many adopted members, sometimes 
from other branches of the Aryan family, sometimes from races 
of men alien to the whole Aryan stock. These races which, in 
a strictly physiological point of view, have no existence at all, 
have a real existence from the more practical point of view of 
history and politics. The Bulgarian calls to the Russian for 
help, and the Russian answers lo his call for help, on the ground 
of their being alike members of the one Slavonic race. It may 
be that, if we could trace out the actual pedigree of this or that 
Bulgarian, of this or that Russian, we might either find that 
there was no real kindred between them, or we might find that 



3l8 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

there was a real kindred, but a kindred which must be traced up 
to another stock than that of the Slav. In point of actual blood, 
instead of both being Slavs, it may be that one of them comes, 
it may be that both of them come, of a stock which is not 
Slavonic or even Aryan. The Bulgarian may chance to be a Bul- 
garian in a truer sense than he thinks for ; he may come of the 
blood of those original Finnish conquerors who gave the Bulgarian 
name to the Slavs among whom they were merged. And if this 
or that Bulgarian may chance to come of the stock of Finnish 
conquerors assimilated by their Slavonic subjects, this or that 
Russian may chance to come of the stock of Finnish subjects 
assimilated by their Slavonic conquerors. It may then so hap- 
pen that the cry for help goes up and is answered on a ground 
of kindred which in the eye of the physiologist has no existence. 
Or it may happen that the kindred is real in a way which neither 
the suppliant nor his helper thinks of. But in either case, for 
the practical purposes of human life, the plea is a good plea ; 
the kindred on which it is founded is a real kindred. It is good 
by the law of adoption. It is good by the law the force of 
which we all admit whenever we count a man as an Englishman 
whose forefathers, two generations or twenty generations back, 
came to our shores as strangers. For all practical purposes, 
for all the purposes which guide men's actions, public or private, 
the Russian and the Bulgarian, kinsmen so long parted, perhaps 
in very truth no natural kinsmen at all, are members of the 
same race, bound together by the common sentiment of race. 
They belong to the same race, exactly as an Englishman whose 
forefathers came into Britain fourteen hundred years back, and 
an Englishman whose forefathers came only one or two hundred 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 319 

years back, are alike members of the same nation, bound 
togetiier by a tie of common nationality. 

And now, having ruled that races and nations, though largely 
formed by the working of an artificial law, are still real and 
living things, groups in which the idea of kindred is the idea 
around which every thing has grown, how are we to define our 
races and our nations ? How are we to mark them off one 
from the other ? Bearing in mind the cautions and qualifica- 
tions which have been already given, bearing in mind large 
classes of exceptions which will presently be spoken of, I say 
unhesitatingly that for practical purposes there is one test, and 
one only, and that that test is language. It is hardly needful to 
show that races and nations cannot be defined by the merely 
political arrangements which group men under various govern- 
ments. For some purposes of ordinary language, for some pur- 
poses of ordinary politics, we are tempted, sometimes driven, to 
take this standard. And in some parts of the world, in our own 
Western Europe for instance, nations and governments do, in a 
rough way, fairly answer to one another. And, in any case, polit- 
ical divisions are not without their influence on the formation of 
national divisions, while national divisions ought to have the 
greatest influence on political divisions. That is to sdiy, prima 
facie a nation and government should coincide. I say only 
prima facie ; for this is assuredly no inflexible rule; there are 
often good reasons why it should be otherwise ; only, whenever 
it is otherwise, there should be some good reason forthcoming. 
It might even be true that in no case did a government and a 
nation exactly coincide, and yet it would none the less be the 
rule that a government and a nation should coincide. That is 



320 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

to say, so far as a nation and a government coincide, we accept 
it as the natural state of things, and ask no question as to the 
cause.' So far as they do not coincide, we mark the case as 
exceptional, by asking what is the cause. And by saying that a 
government and a nation should coincide we mean that, as far 
as possible, the boundaries of governments should be so laid out 
as to agree with the boundaries of nations. That is, we assume 
the nation as something already existing, something primary, to 
which the secondary arrangements of government should, as far 
as possible, conform. How then do we define the nation, which 
is, if there is no especial reason to the contrary, to fix the 
limits of a government ? Primarily, I say, as a rule, but a 
rule subject to exceptions, — as a prima fade standard, subject 
to special reasons to the contrary, — we define the nation by 
language. We may at least apply the test negatively. It would 
be unsafe to rule that all speakers of the same language must 
have a common nationality ; but we may safely say that where 
there is not community of language, there is no common nation- 
ality in the highest sense. It is true that without community of 
language there may be an artificial nationality, a nationality 
which may be good for all political purposes, and which may 
engender a common national feeling. Still this is not quite the 
same thing as that fuller national unity which is felt where there 
is community of language. In fact mankind instinctively takes 
language as the badge of nationality. We so far take it as the 
badge, that we instinctively assume community of language as a 
nation as the rule, and we set down any thing that departs from 
that rule as an exception. The first idea suggested by the word 
Frenchman or German or any other national name, is that he is 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 32I 

a man who speaks French or German as his mother-tongue. We 
take for granted, in the absence of any thing to make us think 
otherwise, that a Frenchman is a speaker of French and that a 
speaker of French is a Frenchman. Where in any case it is other- 
wise, we mark that case as an exception, and we ask the special 
cause. Again, the rule is none the less the rule, nor the excep- 
tions the exceptions, because the exceptions may easily outnumber 
the instances which conform to the rule. The rule is still the rule, 
because we take the instances which conform to it as a matter 
of course, while in every case which dbes not conform to it we 
ask for the explanation. All the larger countries of Europe 
provide us with exceptions ; but we treat them all as excep- 
tions. We do not ask why a native of France speaks French. 
But when a native of France speaks as his mother-tongue some 
other tongue than French, when French, or something which 
popularly passes for French, is spoken as his mother-tongue by 
some one who is not a native of France, we at once ask the 
reason. And the reason will be found in each case in some 
special historical cause which withdraws that case from the oper- 
ation of the general law. A very good reason can be given why 
French, or something which popularly passes for French, is 
spoken in parts of Belgium and Switzerland whose inhabitants 
are certainly not Frenchmen. But the reason has to be given, 
and it may fairly be asked. 

In the like sort, if we turn to our own country, whenever 
wuthin the bounds of Great Britain we find any tongue spoken 
other than English, we at once ask the reason and we learn the 
special historic cause. In a part of France and a part of Great 
Britain we find tongues spoken which differ alike from English 



322 EDWARD A. FREEMAN: 

and from French, but which are strongly akin to one another. 
We find that these are the survivals of a group of tongues once 
common to Gaul and Britain, but which the settlement of other 
nations, the introduction and the growth of other tongues, have 
brought down to the level of surVivals. So again we find 
islands which both speech and geographical position seem to 
mark as French, but which are dependencies, and loyal depen- 
dencies, of the English crown. We soon learn the cause of the 
phenomenon which seems so strange. Those islands are the 
remains of a state and a people which adopted the French 
tongue, but which, while it remained one, did not become a part 
of the French state. That people brought England by force of 
arms under the rule of their own sovereigns. The greater part 
of that people were afterward conquered by France, and gradu- 
ally became French in feeling as well as in language. But a 
remnant clave to their connection with the land which their fore- 
fathers had conquered, and that remnant, while keeping the 
French tongue, never became French in feeling. This last case, 
that of the Norman islands, is a specially instructive one. Nor- 
mandy and England were politically connected, while language 
and geography pointed rather to a union between Normandy 
and France. In the case of continental Normandy, where the 
geographical tie was strongest, language and geography together 
could carry the day, and the continental Norman became a 
Frenchman. In the islands, where the geographical tie was less 
strong, political traditions and manifest interest carried the day 
against language and a weaker geographical tie. The insular 
Norman did not become a Frenchman. But neither did he 
become an Englishman. Fie alone remained Norman, keeping 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 323 

his own tongue and his own laws, but attached to the English 
crown by a tie a once of tradition and of advantage. Between 
states of the relative size of England and the Norman islands, 
the relation naturally becomes a relation of dependence on the 
part of the smaller members of the union. But it is well to 
remember that our forefathers never conquered the forefathers 
of the men of the Norman islands, but that their forefathers 
did once conquer ours. 

These instances, and countless others, bear out the position 
that, while community of language is the most obvious sign of 
common nationality, while it is the main element, or something 
more than an element, in the formation of nationality, the rule 
is open to exceptions of all kinds, and that the influence of 
language is at all times liable to be overruled by other influ- 
ences. But all the exceptions confirm the rule, because we 
specially , remark those cases which contradict the rule, and 
we do not specially remark those cases which do not con- 
form to it. 

In the cases which we have just spoken of, the growth of the 
nation as marked out by language, and the growth of the 
exceptions to the rule of language, have both come through the 
gradual, unconscious working of historical causes. Union under 
the same government, or separation under separate govern- 
ments, have been among the foremost of those historical causes. 
The French nation consists of the people of all that extent of 
continuous territory which has been brought under the rule of 
the French kings. But the working of the cause has been 
gradual and unconscious. There was no moment when any one 
deliberately proposed to form a French nation by joining 



324 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

together all the separate duchies and counties which spoke the 
French tongue. Since the French nation has been formed, 
men have proposed to annex this or that land on the ground 
that its people spoke the French tongue, or perhaps only some 
tongue akin to the French tongue. But the formation of the 
French nation itself was the work of historical causes, the work 
doubtless of a settled policy acting through many generations, 
but not the work of any conscious theory about races and lan- 
guages. It is a special mark of our time, a special mark of the 
influence which doctrines about race and language have had on 
men's minds, that we have seen great nations united by processes 
in which theories of race and language really have had much to 
do with bringing about their union. If statesmen have not been 
themselves moved by such theories, they have at least found that 
it suited their purpose to make use of such theories as a means 
of working on the minds of others. In the reunion of the sev- 
ered German and Italian nations, the conscious feeling of nation- 
ality, and the acceptance of a common language as the outward 
badge of nationality, had no small share. Poets sang of lan- 
guage as the badge of national union; statesmen made it the 
badge, so far as political considerations did not lead them to do 
anything else. The revived kingdom of Italy is very far from 
taking in all the speakers of the Italian tongue. Lugano, Trent, 
Aquileia — to take places which are clearly Italian, and not 
to br4ng in places of more doubtful nationality, like the cities of 
Istria and Dalmatia — form no part of the Italian political body, 
and Corsica is not under the same rule as the other two great 
neighboring islands. But the fact that all these places do not 
belong to the Italian body at once suggests the twofold ques- 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 325 

tion, why they do not belong to it, and whether they ought not 
to belong to it. History easily answers the first question; it 
may perhaj^s also answer the second question in a way which 
will say Yes as regards one jDlace and No as regards another. 
Ticino must not lose her higher freedom ; Trieste must remain 
the needful mouth for southern Germany; Dalmatia must not be 
cut off from the Slavonic mainland; Corsica would seem to have 
sacrificed national feeling to personal hero-worship. But it is 
certainly hard to see why Trent and Aquileia should be kept 
apart from the Italian body. On the other hand, the revived 
Italian kingdom contains very little which is not Italian in 
speech. It is perhaps by a somewhat elastic view of language 
that the dialect of Piedmont and the dialect of Sicily are 
classed under one head ; still, as a matter of fact, they have a 
single classical standard, and they are universally accepted as 
varieties of the same tongue. But it is only in a few Alpine 
valleys that languages are spoken which, whether Romance or 
Teutonic, are in any case not Italian. The reunion of Italy, in 
short, took in all that was Italian, save when some political 
cause hindered the rule of language from being followed. Of 
any thing not Italian by speech so little has been taken in that 
the non-Italian parts of Italy, Burgundian Aosta and the Seven 
German Communes — if these last still keep their Teutonic 
language, — fall under the rule that there are some things too 
small for laws to pay heed to. 

But it must not be forgotten that all this simply means that 
in the lands of which we have just been speaking the process 
of adoption has been carried out on the largest scale. Nations, 
with languages as their rough practical test, have been formed ; 



326 EDWARD A. FREEMAN: 

but they have been formed with very httle regard to physical 
purity of blood. In short, throughout Western Europe assimi- 
lation has been the rule. That is to say, in any of the great 
divisions of Western Europe, though the land may have been 
settled and conquered over and over again, yet the mass of the 
people of the land have been drawn to some one national type. 
Either some one among the races inhabiting the land has taught 
the others to put on its likeness, or else a new national type has 
arisen which has elements drawn from several of those races. 
Thus the modern Frenchman may be defined as produced by 
the union of blood which is mainly Celtic with a speech which 
is mainly Latin, and with an historical polity which is mainly 
Teutonic. That is, he is neither Gaul, Roman, nor Frank, but 
a fourth type which has drawn important elements from all 
three. Within modern France this new national type has so 
far assimilated all others as to make everthing else merely 
exceptional. The Fleming of one corner, the Basque of another, 
even the far more important Breton of a third corner, have all in 
this way become mere exceptions to the general type of the 
country. If we pass into our own islands, we shall find that the 
same process has been at work. If we look to Great Britain 
only, we shall find that, though the means have not been the 
same, yet the end has been gained hardly less thoroughly than 
in France. For all real political purposes, for every thing which 
concerns a nation in the face of other nations. Great Britain is 
as thoroughly united as France is. Englishmen, Scotchmen, 
Welshmen, feel themselves one people in the general affairs of 
the world. A secession of Scotland or Wales is as unlikely as a 
secession of Normandy or Languedoc. The part of the island 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 327 

which is not thoroughly assimilated in language, that part which 
still speaks Welsh or Gaelic, is larger in proportion than the non- 
French part of modern France. But however much either the 
northern or the western Briton may, in a fit of antiquarian 
politics, declaim against the Saxon, for all practical political 
purposes he and the Saxon are one. The distinction between 
the southern and the northern English — for the men of Lothian 
and Fife must allow me to call them by this last name — is, 
speaking politically and without ethnological or linguistic precis- 
ion, much as if France and Aquitaine had been two kingdoms 
united on equal terms, instead of Aquitaine being merged in 
France. When we cross into Ireland, we indeed find another 
state of things, and one which comes nearer to some of the 
phenomena which we shall come to in other parts of the world. 
Ireland is, most unhappily, not so firmly united to Great Britain 
as the different parts of Great Britain are to one another. 
Still even here the division arises quite as much from geographi- 
cal and historical causes as from distinctions of race strictly 
so called. If Ireland had had no wrongs, still two great 
islands can never be so thoroughly united as a continuous 
territory can be. On the other hand, in point of language, the 
discontented part of the United Kingdom is much less strongly 
marked off than that fraction of the contented part which is not 
thoroughly assimilated. Irish is certainly not the language of 
Irfeland in at all the same degree in which Welsh is the language 
of Wales. The Saxon has commonly to be denounced in the 
Saxon tongue. 

In some other parts of Western Europe, as in the Spanish 
and Scandinavian peninsulas, the coincidence of language and 



328 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

nationality is stronger then it is in France, Britain, or even Italy. 
No one speaks Spanish except in Spain or in the colonies of 
Spain. And within Spain the proportion of those who do not 
speak Spanish, namely the Basque remnant, is smaller than the 
non-assimilated element in Britain and France. Here two 
things are to be marked : First, the modern Spanish nation has 
been formed, like the French, by a great process of assimilation ; 
secondly, the actual national arrangements of the Spanish 
peninsula are wholly due to historical causes, we might almost 
say historical accidents, and those of very recent date. Spain 
and Portugal are separate kingdoms, and we look on their in- 
habitants as forming separate nations. But this is simply be- 
cause a Queen of Castile in the fifteenth century married a King 
of Aragon. Had Isabel married a King of Portugal, we should 
now talk of Spain and Aragon as we now talk of Spain and 
Portugal, and we should count Portugal for part of Spain. In 
language, in history, in every thing else, Aragon was really more 
distinct from Castile than Portugal was. The King of Castile 
was already spoken of as King of Spain, and Portugal would 
have merged in the Spanish kingdom at last as easily as Aragon 
did. In Scandinavia, on the other hand, there must have been 
less assimilation than anywhere else. In the present kingdoms 
of Norway and Sweden, there must be a nearer approach to 
actual purity of blood than in any other part of Europe. One 
cannot fancy that much Finnish blood has been assimilated, anH 
there have been no conquests or settlements later than that of 
the Northmen themselves. 

When we pass into Central Europe we shall find a somewhat 
different state of things. The distinctions of race seem to be 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 329 

more lasting. While the national unity of the German Empire 
is greater than that of either France or Great Britain, it has not 
only subjects of other languages, but actually discontented 
subjects, in three corners, on its French, its Danish, and its 
Polish frontiers. We ask the reason, and it will be at once 
answered that the discontent of all three is the result of recent 
conquest, in two cases of very recent conquest indeed. But this 
is one of the very points to be marked ; the strong national 
unity of the German Empire has been largely" the result of 
assimilation ; and these three parts, where recent conquest has 
not yet been followed by assimilation, are chiefly important 
because, in all three cases, the discontented territory is geo- 
graphically continuous with a territory of its own speech outside 
the Empire. This does not prove that assimilation can never 
take place ; but it will undoubtedly make the process longer and 
harder. 

So again, wherever German-speaking people dwell outside the 
bounds of the revived German state, as well as when that revived 
German state contains other than German-speaking people, we 
ask the reason and we can find it. Political reasons forbade the 
immediate annexation of Austria, Tyrol, and Salzburg. Com- 
bined political and geographical reasons, and, if we look a little 
deeper, ethnological reasons too, forbade the annexation of 
Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia. Some reason or other will, it 
may be hoped, always be found to hinder the annexation of 
lands which, like Zurich and Berne, have reached a higher politi- 
cal level. Outlying brethren in Transylvania or at Saratof 
again come under the rule " De minimis non curat lex." In all 
these cases the rule that nationality and language should go 



330 EDWARD A. FREE MA IV. 

together, yields to unavoidable circumstances. But, on the 
other hand, where French or Danish or Slavonic or Lithuanian 
is spoken within the bounds of the new Empire, the principle 
that language is the badge of nationality, that without community 
of language nationality is imperfect, shows itself in another 
shape. One main object of modern policy is to bring these 
exceptional districts under the general rule by spreading the 
German language in them. Everywhere, in short, wherever a 
power is supposed to be founded on nationality, the common 
feeling of mankind instinctively takes language as the test of 
nationality. We assume language as the test of a nation, with- 
out going into any minute questions as to the physical purity of 
blood in that nation. ' A continuous territory, living under the 
same government and speaking the same tongue, forms a nation 
for all practical purposes. If some of its inhabitants do not 
belong to the original stock by blood, they at least belong to it 
by adoption. 

The question may now fairly be asked. What is the case in 
those parts of the world where people who are confessedly of 
different races and languages inhabit a continuous territory and 
live under the same government ? How do we define nationality 
in such cases as these ? The answer will be very different in 
different cases, according to the means by which the different 
national elements in such a territory have been brought to- 
gether. They may form what I have already called an artificial 
nation, united by an act of its own free will. Or it may be 
simply a case where distinct nations, distinct in every thing 
which can be looked on as forming a nation, except the posses- 
sion of an independent government, are brought together, by 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 33 1 

whatever causes, under a common ruler. The former case is 
very distinctly an exception which proves the rule, and the latter 
is, though in quite another way, an exception which proves the 
rule also. Both cases may need somew-hat more in the way of 
definition. We will begin with the first, the case of a nation 
which has been formed out of elements which differ in language, 
but which still have been brought together so as to form an 
artificial nation. In the growth of the chief nations of Western 
Europe, the principle which was consciously or unconsciously 
followed has been that the nation should be marked out by lan- 
guage, and the use of any tongue other than the dominant 
tongue of the nation should be at least exceptional. But there 
is one nation in Europe, one which has a full right to be called 
a nation in a political sense, which has been formed on the 
directly opposite principle. The Swiss Confederation has been 
formed by the union of certain detached fragments of the 
German, Italian, and Burgundian nations. It may indeed be 
said that the process has been in some sort a process of adop- 
tion, that the Italian and Burgundian elements have been 
incorporated into an already existing German body ; that, as 
those elements were once subjects or dependents or protected 
allies, the case is one of clients or freedmen who have been 
admitted to the full privileges of the gens. This is undoubtedly 
true, and it is equally true of a large part of the German ele- 
ment itself. Throughout the Confederation, allies and subjects 
have been raised to the rank of confederates. But the former 
position of the component elements does not matter for our 
purpose. As a matter of fa'^t, the foreign dependencies have all 
been admitted into the Confederation on equal terms. German 



332 EDWARD A. FREEMAN: 

is undoubtedly the language of a great majority of the Confed- 
eration ; but the two recognized Romance languages are each 
the speech, not of a mere fragment or survival, like Welsh in 
Britain or Breton in France, but of a large minority forming a 
visible element in the general body. The three languages are 
all of them alike recognized as national languages, though, as if 
to keep up the universal rule that there should be some excep- 
tions to all rules, a fourth language still lives on within the 
bounds of the Confederation, which is not admitted to the rights 
of the other three, but is left in the state of a fragment or a 
survival.-' Is such an artiiicial body as this to be called a 
nation ? It is plainly not a nation by blood or by speech. It 
can hardly be called a nation by adoption. For, if we choose 
to say that the three elements have all agreed to adopt one an- 
other as brethren, yet it has been adoption without assimilation. 
Yet surely the Swiss Confederation is a nation. It is not a 
mere power, in which various nations are brought together, 
whether willingly or unwillingly, under a common ruler, but 
without any further tie of union. For all political purposes, the 
Swiss Confederation is a nation, a nation capable of as strong 
and true national feeling as any other nation. Yet it is a nation 
purely artificial, one in no way defined by blood or speech. It 
thus proves the rule in two ways. We at once feel that this arti- 
ficially formed nation, which has no common language, but each 

1 Wltile the Swiss Confederation recognizes German, French, and Italian as all 
alike national languages, the independent Romance language, which is still used in 
some parts of the Canton of Graubiinden, that which is known specially as Romansch, 
is not recognized. It is left in the same position in which Welsh and Gaelic are left 
in Great Britain, in which Basque, Breton, Provengal^ Walloon, and Flemish are left 
within the borders of that French kingdom which has grown so as to take them all in. 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 333 

of whose elements speaks a language common to itself with 
some other nation, is something different from those nations 
w'hich are defined b)^ a universal or at least a predominant lan- 
guage. We mark it as an exception, as something different 
from other cases. And when we see how nearly this artificial 
nation comes, in every point but that of language, to the like- 
ness of those nations which are defined by language, we see 
that it is a nation defined by language which sets the stand- 
ard, and after the model of which the artificial nation forms 
itself. The case of the Swiss Confederation and its claim 
to rank as a nation would be like the case of those gentes, 
if any such there were, which did not spring even from the 
expansion of an original family, but which were artificially 
formed in imitation of those which did, and which, instead of a 
real or traditional forefather, chose for themselves an adopted 
one. 

In the Swiss Confederation, then, we have a case of a nation 
formed by an artificial process, but which still is undoubtedly a 
nation in the face of other nations. We now come to the other 
class, in which nationality and language keep the connection 
which they have elsewhere, but in -which nations do not even in 
the roughest way answer to governments. We have only to go 
into the Eastern lands of Europe to find a state of things in 
which the notion of nationality, as marked out by language 
and national feeling, has altogether parted company from the 
notion of political government. It must be remembered that 
this state of things is not confined to the nations which are or 
have lately been under the yoke of the Turk. It extends also 
to the nations or fragments of nations which make up the 



334 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. . 

Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In all the lands held by these 
two powers we come across phenomena of geography, race, and 
language, which stand out in marked contrast with anything to 
which we are used in Western Europe. We may perhaps better 
understand what those phenomena are, if we suppose a state of 
things which sounds absurd in the West, but which has its 
exact parallel in many parts of the East. Let us suppose that 
in a journey through England we came successively to districts, 
towns, or villages, where we found, one after another, first, 
Britons speaking Welsh ; then Romans speaking Latin ; then 
Saxons or Angles speaking an older form of our own tongue; 
then Scandinavians speaking Danish ; then Normans speaking 
Old-French ; lastly perhaps a settlement of Flemings, Huguenots, 
or Palatines, still remaining a distinct people and speaking their 
own tongue. Or let us suppose a journey through Northern 
France, in which we found at different stages, the original Gaul, 
the Roman, the Frank, the Saxon of Bayeux, the Dane of 
Coutances, each remaining a distinct people, each of them keep- 
ing the tongue which they first brought with them into the land. 
Let us suppose further that, in many of these cases, a religious 
distinction was added to a national distinction. Let us con- 
ceive one village Roman Catholic, another Anglican, others 
Nonconformist of various types, even if we do not call up any 
remnants of the worshippers of Jupiter or of Woden. All this 
seems, absurd in any Western country, and absurd enough it is. 
But the absurdity of the West is the living reality of the East. 
There we may still find all the chief races which have ever 
occupied the country, still remaining distinct, still keeping sepa- 
rate tongues, and those for the most part, their own original 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 335 

tongues. Within the present and late European dominions of 
the Turk, the original races, those whom we find there at the 
first beginnings of history, are all there still, and two of them 
keep their original tongues. They form three distinct nations. 
First of all there are the Greeks. We have not here to deal 
with them as the representatives of that branch of the Roman 
Empire which adopted their speech, but simply as one of the 
original elemeifts in the population of the Eastern peninsula. 
Known almost down to our day by their historical name of 
Romans, they have now fallen back on the name of Hellenes. 
And to that name they have a perfectly good claim. If the 
modern Greeks are not all true Hellenes, they are an aggregate 
of adopted Hellenes gathered round and assimilated to a true 
Hellenic kernel. Here we see the oldest recorded inhabitants 
of a large part of the land abiding, and abiding in a very differ- 
ent case from the remnants of the Celt and the Iberian in 
Western Europe. The Greeks are no survival of a nation ; they 
are a true and living nation, a nation whose importance is quite 
out of its proportion to its extent in mere numbers. They still 
abide, the predominant race in their own ancient and again 
independent land, the predominant race in those provinces of 
the continental Turkish dominion which formed part of their 
ancient land, the predominant race through all the shores and 
islands of the ^gean and of part of the Euxine also. In 
near neighborhood to the Greeks still live another race of equal 
antiquity, the Skipetar or Albanians. These, as I believe is no 
longer doubted, represent the ancient Illyrians. The exact 
degree of their ethnical kindred with the Greeks is a scientific 
question which need not here be considered ; but the facts that 



336 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

they are more largely intermingled with the Greeks than any of 
the other neighboring nations, that they show a special power of 
identifying themselves with the Greeks, a power, so to speak, of 
becoming Greeks and making part of the artificial Greek nation, 
are matters of practical history. It must never be forgotten, 
that among the worthies of the Greek War of Independence, some 
of the noblest were not of Hellenic but Albanian blood. The 
Orthodox Albanian easily turns into a Greek ; and the Mahome- 
tan Albanian is something which is broadly distinguished from 
a Turk. He has, as he well may have, a strong national feeling, 
and that national feeling has sometimes got the better of religious 
divisions. If Albania is among the most backward parts of the 
peninsula, still it is, by all accounts, the part where there is 
most hope of men of different religions joining together against 
the common enemy. 

Here then are two ancient races, the Greeks and another race, 
not indeed so advanced, so important, or so widely spread, but 
a race which equally keeps a real national being. There is also 
a third ancient race which survives as a distinct people, though 
they have for ages adopted a foreign language. These are the 
Vlachs or Roumans, the surviving representatives of the great 
race, call it Thracian or any other, which at the beginning of 
history held the great inland mass of the Eastern peninsula, 
with the Illyrians to the west of them and the Greeks to the 
south. Every one knows, that in the modern principality of 
Roumania and in the adjoining parts of the Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy, there is to be seen that phenomenon so unique in the 
East, a people who not only, as the Greeks did till lately, still 
keep the Roman name, but who speak neither Greek nor Turkish, 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 337 

neither Slav nor Skipetar, but a dialect of Latin, a tongue akin, 
not to the tongues of any of their neighbors, but to the tongues 
of Gaul, Italy, and Spain. And any one who has given any 
real attention to this matter knows that the same race is to be 
found, scattered here and there, if in some parts only as wander- 
ing shepherds, in the Slavonic, Albanian, and Greek lands south 
of the Danube. The assumption has commonly been that this 
outlying Romance people owe their Romance character to the 
Roman colonization of Dacia under Trajan. In this view, the 
modern Roumans would be the descendants of Trajan's colonists 
and of Dacians who had learned of them to adopt the speech 
and manners of Rome. But when we remember that Dacia was 
the first Roman province to be given up — that the modern 
Roumania was for ages the highway of every barbarian tribe on 
its way from the East to the West — that the land has been 
conquered and settled and forsaken over and over again, — it 
would be passing strange if this should be the one land, and its 
people the one race, to keep the Latin tongue when it has been 
forgotten in all the neighboring countries. In fact, this idea 
has been completely dispersed by modern research. The 
establishment of the Roumans in Dacia is of comparatively 
recent date, beginning only in the thirteenth century. The 
Roumans of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, are isolated 
from the scattered Rouman remnant on Pindos and elsewhere. 
They represent that part of the inhabitants of the peninsula 
which became Latin, while the Greeks remained Greek, and the 
Illyrians remained barbarian. Their lands, Moesia, Thrace 
specially so called, and Dacia, were added to the empire at 
various times from Augustus to Trajan. That they should 



338 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

gradually adopt the Latin language is in no sort wonderful. 
Their position with regard to Rome was exactly. the same as 
that of Gaul and Spain. Where Greek civilization had been 
firmly established, Latin could nowhere displace it. Where 
Greek civilization was unknown, Latin overcame the barbarian 
tongue. It would naturally do so in this part of the East 
exactly as it did in the West.-* 

Here then we have in the Southeastern peninsula three nations 
which have all lived on to all ajDpearances from the very begin- 
nings of European history, three distinct nations, speaking three 
distinct languages. We have nothing answering to this in the 
West. It needs no proof that the speakers of Celtic and 
Basque in Gaul and in Spain do not hold the same position in 
Western Europe which the Greeks, Albanians, and Roumans do 
in Eastern Europe. In the East the most ancient inhabitants of 
the land are still there, not as scraps or survivals, not as frag- 
ments of nations lingering on in corners, but as nations in the 
strictest sense, nations whose national being forms an element 
in every modern and political question. They all have their 
memories, their grievances, and their hopes ; and their memories, 
their grievances, and their hopes are all of a practical and politi- 
cal kind. Highlanders, Welshmen, Bretons, French Basques, 
whatever we say of the Spanish brethren, have doubtless memo- 
ries, but they have hardly political grievances or hopes. Ireland 
may tjave political grievances ; it certainly has political hopes ; 
but they are not exactly of the same kind as the grievances or 
hopes of the Greek, the Albanian, and the Rouman. Let Home 

' On Rouman history I have followed Roesler's Romdnische Studien and lireck's 
Geschichte der Bulgaren. 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. , 339 

Rule succeed to the extent of setting up an independent king 
and parliament of Ireland, yet the language and civilization of 
that king and parliament would still be English. Ireland would 
form an English state, politically hostile, it may be, to Great 
Britain, but still an English state. No Greek, Albanian, or 
Rouman state would be in the same way either Turkish or 
Austrian. 

On these primitive and abiding races came, as on other parts 
of Europe, the Roman conquest. That conquest planted Latin 
colonies on the Dalmatian coast, where the Latin tongue still 
remains in its Italian variety as the speech of literature and city 
life; it Romanized one great part of the earlier inhabitants; it 
had the great political effect of all, that of planting the Roman 
power in a Greek city, and thereby creating a state, and in the 
end a nation, which was Roman on one side, and Greek on the 
other. Then came the Wandering of the Nations, on which, as 
regards men of our own race, we need not dwell. The Goths 
marched at will through the Eastern Empire ; but no Teutonic 
settlement was ever made within its bounds, no lasting Teutonic 
settlement was ever made even on its border. The part of the 
Teuton in the West was played, far less perfectly indeed, by the 
Slav in the East. He is there what the Teuton is here, the 
great representative of what we may call the modern European 
races, those whose part in history began after the establishment 
of the Rouman power. The differences between the position of 
the two races are chiefly these. The Slav in the East has prae- 
Roman races standing alongside of him in a way in which the 
Teuton has not in the West. On the Greeks and Albanians he 
has had but little influence ; on the Rouman and his language 



340 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

his influence has been far greater, but hardly so great as the in- 
fluence of the Teuton on the Romance nations and Languages 
of Western Europe. The Slav too stands alongside of races 
which have come in since his own coming, in a way in which the 
Teuton in the West is still further from doing. That is to say, 
besides Greeks, Albanians, and Roumans, he stands alongside 
of Bulgarians, Magyars, and Turks, who have nothing to answer 
fo them in the West. The Slav, in the time of his coming, in 
the nature of his settlement, answers roughly to the Teuton ; his 
position is what that of the Teuton would be, if Western Europe 
had been brought under the power of an alien race at some time 
later than his own settlement. The Slavs undoubtedly form the 
greatest element in the population of the Eastern peninsula, and 
they once reached more widely still. Taking the Slavonic name 
in its widest meaning, they occupy all the lands from the Danube 
and its great tributaries southward to the strictly Greek border. 
The exceptions are where earlier races remain, Greek or Italian 
on the coast-line, Albanian in the mountains. The Slavs hold 
the heart of the peninsula, and they hold more than the penin- 
sula itself. The Slav lives equally on both sides of what is or was 
the frontier of the Austrian and Ottoman empires ; indeed, but 
for another set of causes which have affected Eastern Europe, 
the Slav might have reached uninterruptedly from tlie Baltic to 
the ^gean. 

Tliis last set of causes are those which specially distinguish 
the histories of Eastern and of Western Europe ; a set of causes 
which, though exactly twelve hundred years okV are still fresh 

1 It should be remembered that, as the year 1879 saw the beginning of the liber- 
ated Bulgarian state, the year 679 saw the beginning of the first Bulgarian kingdom 
south of the Danube. 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 34 1 

and living, and which are the special causes which have aggra- 
vated the special difficulties of the last five hundred years. In 
Western Europe, though we have had 'plenty of political con- 
quests, we have had no national migrations since the days of the 
Teutonic settlements — at least, if we may extend these last so 
as to take in the Scandinavian settlements in Britain and Gaul. 
The Teuton has pressed to the East at the expense of the Slav 
and the Old-Prussian : the borders between the Romance and 
the Teutonic nations in the West have fluctuated; but no third 
set of nations has come in, strange alike to the Roman and the 
Teuton and to the whole Aryan family. As the Huns of Attila 
showed themselves in Western Europe as passing ravagers, so 
did the Magyars at a later day ; so did the Ottoman Turks in a 
day later still, when they besieged Vienna and laid waste the 
Venetian mainland. But all these Turanian invaders appeared 
in Western Europe simply as passing invaders ; in Eastern 
Europe their part has been widely different. Besides the tem- 
porary dominion of Avars, Patzinaks, Chazars, Cumans, and a 
crowd of others, three bodies of more abiding settlers, the Bul- 
garians, the Magyars, and the Mongol conquerors of Russia, 
have come in by one path; a fourth, the Ottoman Turks, have 
come in by another path. Among all these invasions we have 
one case of thorough assimilation, and only one. The original 
Finnish Bulgarians have, like Western conquerors, been lost 
among Slavonic subjects and neighbors. The geographical 
function of the Magyar has been to keep the two great groups 
of Slavonic nations apart. To his coming, more than to any 
other cause, we may attribute the great historical gap which 
separates the Slav of the Baltic from his southern kinsfolk. The 



342 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

work of the Ottoman Turk we all know. These latter settlers 
remain alongside of the Slav, just as the Slav remains alongside 
of the earlier settlers. The Slavonized Bulgarians are the only- 
instance of assimilation such as we are used to in the West. All 
the other races, old and new, from the Albanian to the Ottoman, 
are still there, each keeping its national being and its national 
speech. And in one part of the ancient Dacia we must add 
quite a distinct element, the element of Teutonic occupation in 
a form unlike any in which we see it in the West, in the shape 
of the Saxons of Transylvania. 

We have thus worked out our point in detail. While in each 
Western country some one of the various races which have set- 
tled in it has, speaking roughly, assimilated the others, in the 
lands which are left under the rule of the Turk, or which have 
been lately delivered from his rule, all the races that have ever 
settled in the country still abide side by side. So when we pass 
into the lands which form the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, we 
find that that composite dominion is just as much opposed as 
the dominion of the Turk is to those ideas of nationality toward 
which Western Europe has been long feeling its way. We have 
seen by the example of Switzerland that it is possible to make 
an artificial nation out of fragments which have split off from 
three several nations. But the Austro-Hungarian monarchy is 
not a nation, not even an artificial nation of this kind. Its 
elenjents are not bound together in the same way as the three 
elements of the Swiss Confederation. It does indeed contain 
one whole nation in the form of the Magyars ; we might say 
that it contains two, if we reckon the Czechs for a distinct 
nation. Of its other elements, we may for the moment set aside 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 343 

those parts of Germany which are so strangely united with the 
crowns of Hungary and Dahiiatia. In those parts of the mon- 
archy which come within the more strictly Eastern lands — the 
Rotnan and the Rouman, — we may so distinguish the Romance- 
speaking inhabitants of Dalmatia and the Romance-speaking 
inhabitants of Transylvania. The Slav of the north and of the 
south, the Magyar conqueror, the Saxon immigrant, all abide as 
distinct races. That the Ottoman is not to be added to our list 
in Hungary, while he is to be added in lands farther south, is 
simply because he has been driven out of Hungar}', while he is 
allowed to abide in lands farther south. No point is more 
important to insist on now than the fact that the Ottoman once 
held the greater part of Hungary by exactly the same right, the 
right of the strongest, as that by which he still holds Macedonia 
and Epeiros. It is simply the result of a century of warfare, 
from Sobieski to Joseph the Second, which fixed the boundary 
which only yesterday seemed eternal to diplomatists, but which 
now seems to have vanished. That boundary has advanced and 
gone b'ack over and over again. As Buda once was Turkish, 
Belgrade has more than once been Austrian. The whole of the 
southeastern lands, Austrian, Turkish, and independent, from 
the Carpathian Mountains southward, present the same charac- 
teristic of permanence and distinctness among the several races 
which occupy them. The several races may lie, here in large 
continuous masses, there in small detached settlements; but 
there they all are in their distinctness. There is among them 
plenty of living and active national feeling ; but while in the 
West, political arrangements for the most part follow the great 
lines of national feeling, in the East the only way in which 



344 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

national feeling can show itself is by protesting, whether in arms 
or otherwise, against existing political arrangements. Save the 
Magyars alone, the ruling race in the Hungarian kingdom, there 
is no case in those lands in which the whole continuous territory 
inhabited by speakers of the same tongue is placed under a sep- 
arate national government of its own. And, even in this case, 
the identity between nation and government is imperfect in two 
ways. It is imperfect, because, after all, though Hungary has a 
separate national government in internal matters, yet it is not 
the Hungarian kingdom, but the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of 
which it forms a part, which counts as a power among the other 
powers of Europe. And the national character of the Hunga- 
rian government is equally imperfect from the other side. It is 
national as regards the Magyar; it is not national as regards the 
Slav, the Saxon, and the Rouman. Since the liberation of part 
of Bulgaria, no whole European nation is under the rule of the 
Turk. No one nation of the Southeast peninsula forms a single 
national government. One fragment of a nation is free under 
a national government, another fragment is ruled by civilized 
strangers, a third is trampled down by barbarians. The existing 
states of Greece, Roumania, and Servia are far from taking in 
the whole of the Greek, Rouman, and Servian nations. In all 
these lands, Austrian, Turkish, and independent, there is no 
difficulty in marking off the several nations ; only in no case do 
the nations answer to any existing political power. 

In all these cases, where nationality and government are alto- 
gether divorced, language becomes yet more distinctly the test 
of nationality than it is in Western lands where nationality and 
government do to some extent coincide. And when nationality 




RACE AND LANGUAGE, 345 

and language do not coincide in the East, it is owing to another 
cause, of which also we know nothing in the West. In many 
cases religion takes the place of nationality ; or rather the ideas 
of religion and nationality can hardly be distinguished. In the 
West a man's nationality is in no way affected by the religion 
which he professes, or even by his change from one religion to 
another. In the East it is otherwise. The Christian renegade 
who embraces Islam becomes for most practical purposes a 
Turk. Even if, as in Crete and Bosnia, he keeps his Greek or 
Slavonic language, he remains Greek or Slav only in a second- 
ary sense. For the first principle of the Mahometan religion, 
the lordship of the true believer over the infidel, cuts off the 
possibility of any true national fellowship between the true 
believer and the infidel. Even the Greek or Armenian who 
embraces the Latin creed goes far toward parting with his 
nationality as well as with his religion. For the adoption of the 
Latin creed implies what is in some sort the adoption of a new 
allegiance, the accepting of the authority of the Roman Bishop. 
In the Armenian indeed we are come very near to the phenom- 
ena of the further East, where names like Parsee and Hindoo, 
names in themselves as strictly ethnical as Englishman or 
Frenchman, have come to express distinctions in which religion 
and nationality are absolutely the same thing. Of this whole 
class of phenomena the Jew is of course the crowning example. 
But we speak of these matters here only as bringing in an 
element in the definition of nationality to which we are unused 
in the West. But it quite comes within our present subject to 
give one definition from the Southeastern lands. What is the 
Greek .> Clearly he who is at once a Greek in speech and 



346 EDWARD A. FKEEMAIV. 

Orthodox in faiih. The Hellenic Mussulmans in Crete, even 
the Hellenic Latins in some of the other islands, are at the 
most imperfect members of the Hellenic body. Tne utmost 
that can be said is that they keep the power of again entering 
that body, either by their own return to the national faith, or by 
such a change in the state of things as shall make difference in 
religion no longer inconsistent with true national fellowship. 

Thus, wherever we go, we find language to be the rough prac- 
tical test of nationality. The exceptions are many ; they may 
perhaps outnumber the instances which conform to the rule. 
Still they are exceptions. Community of language does not 
imply community of blood ; it might be added that diversity of 
language does not imply diversity of blood. But community of 
language is, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, a 
presumption of the community of blood, and it is proof of some- 
thing which for practical purposes is the same as community of 
blood. To talk of "the Latin race," is in strictness absurd. 
We know that the so called race is simply made up of those 
nations which adopted the Latin language. The Celtic, Teu- 
tonic, and Slavonic races may conceivably have been formed by 
a like artificial process. But the presumption is the other way ; 
and if such a process ever took place, it took place long before 
history began. The Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races come 
before us as groups of mankind marked out by the test of lan- 
guage. Within those races separate nations are again marked 
out by a stricter application of the test of language. Within the 
race we may have languages which are clearly akin to each 
other, but which need not be mutually, intelligible. Within the 
nation we have only dialects which are mutually intelligible, or 



RACE AND LANGUAGE. 347 

which, at all events, gather round some one central dialect 
which is intelligible to all. We take this standard of races and 
nations, fully aware that it will not stand a jDhysiological test, 
but holding that for all practical purposes adoption must pass as 
equivalent to natural descent. And, among the practical pur- 
poses which are affected by the facts of race and nationality, we 
must, as long as a man is what he is, as long as he has not been 
created afresh according to some new scientific pattern, not 
shrink from reckoning those generous emotions which, in the 
present state of European feeling, are beginning to bind together 
the greater as well as the lesser groups of mankind. The sym- 
pathies of men are beginning to reach wider than could have 
dreamed of a century ago. The feeling which was once confined 
to the mere household extended itself to the tribe or the city. 
From the tribe or city it extended itself to the nation; from the 
nation it is beginning to extend itself to the whole race. In 
some cases it can extend itself to the whole race far more easily 
than in others. In some cases historical causes have made 
nations of the same race bitter enemies, while they have made 
nations of different races friendly allies. The same thing hap- 
pened in earlier days between tribes and cities of the same 
nation. But, when hindrances of this kind do not exist, the 
feeling of race, as something beyond the narrower feeling of 
nationality, is beginning to be a powerful agent in the feelings 
and actions of men and of nations. A long series of mutual 
wrongs, conquest, and oppression on one side, avenged by con- 
quest and oppression on the other side, have made the Slav 
of Poland and the Slav of Russia the bitterest of enemies. 
No such hindrance exists to stop the flow of natural and 



348 EDWARD A. FREEMAN. 

generous feeling between the Slav of Russia and the Slav of the 
Southeastern lands. Those whose statesmanship, consists in 
some hand-to-mouth shift for the moment, whose wisdom con- 
sists in refusing to look either back to the past or onward to the 
future, cannot understand this great fact of our limes ; and what 
they cannot understand they mock at. But the fact exists and 
does its work in spite of them. And it does its work none the. 
less because in some cases the feeling of sympathy is awakened 
by a claim of kindred, where, in the sense of the physiologist or 
the genealogist, there is no kindred at all. The practical view, 
historical or political, will accept as members of this or that 
race or nation many members whom the physiologist would shut 
out, whom the English lawyer would shut out, but whom the 
Roman lawyer would gladly welcome to every privilege of the 
stock on which they were grafted. The line of the Scipios, of 
the Caesars, and of the Antonines, was continued by adoption ; 
and for all practical purposes the nations of the earth have 
agreed to follow the examples set them by their masters. 



I 



KIN BF.YOND SEA.* 



By WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

(Born iSog.) 




" WTien Love unites, wide space divides in vain, 
And hands may clasp across tlie spreading main." 

T is now nearly half a century since the works of De 
Tocqueville and De Beaumont, founded upon per- 
sonal observation, brought the institutions of the 
United States effectually within the circle of European 
thought and interest. They were co-operators, but not upon an 
equal scale. De Beaumont belongs to the class of ordinary, 
though able, writers : De Tocqueville was the Burke of his age, 
and his treatise upon America may well be regarded as among 
the best books hitherto produced for the political student of 
all times and countries. 

But higher and deeper than the concern of the Old World at 
large in the thirteen colonies, now grown into thirty-eight States, 
besides eight Territories, is the special interest of England in 
their condition and prospects. 

* Published in the North American Review for September, 1S78. Republished by 
permission. 

349 



350 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

I do not speak of political controversies between them and 
us, which are happily, as I trust, at an end. I do not speak of 
the vast contribution which, from year to year, through the 
operations of a colossal trade, each makes to the wealth and 
comfort of the other ; nor of the friendly controversy, which in 
its own place it might be well to raise, between the leanings of 
America to Protectionism, and the more daring reliance of the 
old country upon free and unrestricted intercourse with all 
the world. Nor of the menace M'hich, in the prospective devel- 
opment of her resources, America offers to the commercial pre- 
eminence of England.^ On this subject I will only say that it 
is she alone who, at a coming time, can, and probably will, wrest 
from us that commercial primacy. We have no title, I have no 
inclination, to murmur at the prospect. If she acquires it, she 
will make the acquisition by the right of tlie strongest ; but, in 
this instance, the strongest means the best. She will probably 
become v;hat we are now, the head servant in the great house- 
hold of the world, the employer of all employed ; because her 
service will be the most and ablest. We have no more title 
against her, than Venice, or Genoa, or Holland has had against 
us. One great duty is entailed upon us, which we, unfortunately, 
neglect : the duty of preparing, by a resolute and sturdy effort, 
to reduce our public burdens, in preparation for a day when we 



1 [TIijs topic was much more largely handled by me in the Financial Statement 
which I delivered, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, on May 2, 1S66. I recommend 
attention to the excellent article by Mr. Henderson, in the Contemporary Review for 
October, 1878 : and I agree with the author in being disposed to think that the protec- 
tive laws of America effectually bar the full development of her competing power. — 
W. E. G., Nov. 6, i8;8.] 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 35 I 

shall probably have less capacity than we have now to bear 
them. 

Passing by all these subjects, with their varied attractions, I 
come to another, which lies within the tranquil domain of politi- 
cal philosophy. The students of the future, in this department, 
will have much to say in the way of comparison between 
American and British institutions. The relationship between 
these two is unique in history. It is always interesting to trace 
and to compare Constitutions, as it is to compare languages; 
esi*2cially in such instances as those of the Greek States and 
the Italian Republics, or the diversified forms of the feudal 
system in the different countries of Europe. But there is no 
parallel in all the records of the world to the case of that prolific 
British mother, who has sent forth her innumerable children 
over all the earth to be the founders of half-a-dozen empires. 
She, with her progeny, may almost claim to constitute a kind of 
Universal Church in politics. But, among these children, there 
is one whose place in the world's eye and in history is superla- 
tive : it is the American Republic. She is the eldest born. She 
has, taking the capacity of her land into view as well as its mere 
measurement, a natural base for the greatest continuous empire 
ever established by man. And it may be well here to mention 
what has not always been sufficiently observed, that the distinc- 
tion between continuous empire, and empire severed and dis^ 
l^ersed over sea, is vital. The development, which the Republic 
has effected, has been unexampled in its rapidity and force. 
While other countries have doubled, or at most trebled, their 
population, she has risen, during one single century of freedom, 
in round numbers, from two millions to forty-five. As to riches. 



352 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

it is reasonable to establish, from the decennial stages of the 
progress thus far achieved, a series for the future ; and, reckon- 
ing upon this basis, I suppose that the very next census, in the 
year 1880, will exhibit her to the world as certainly the wealth- 
iest of all the nations. The huge figure of a thousand millions 
sterling, which may be taken roundly as the annual income of 
the United Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate ; a 
rate which may perhaps be best expressed by saying, that if we 
could have started forty or fifty years ago from zero, at the rate 
of our recent annual increment, we should now have reacl^fed 
our present position. But while we have been advancing with 
this portentous rapidity, America is passing us by as if in a 
canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the 
bowels of the territory, and opening out her enterprise through- 
out its vast expanse, is in its infancy. The England and the 
America of the present are probably the two strongest nations 
of the world. But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the 
America and the England of the future, that the daughter, at 
some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or less fair, be 
unquestionably yet stronger than the mother. 

" O matre forti filia fortior." 1 

But all this pompous detail of material triumphs, whether for 
the one or for the other, is worse than idle, unless the men of 
the two countries shall remain, or shall become, greater than the 
mere things that they produce, and shall know how to regard 
those things simply as tools and materials for the attainments of 
the highest purposes of their being. Ascending, then, from the 

' See Hor., Od. I., 16. 



KIJV BEYOND SEA. 353 

ground-floor of material industry toward the regions in winch 
these purposes are to be wrought out, it is for each nation to 
consider how far its institutions have reached a state in which 
they can contribute their maximum to the store of human happi- 
ness and excellence. And for the political student all over the 
world, it will be beyond any thing curious as well as useful to 
examine with what diversities, as well as what resemblances, of 
apparatus the two greater branches of a race born to command 
have been minded, or induced, or constrained to work out, in 
their sea-severed seats, their political destinies according to the 
resjDective laws appointed for them. 

No higher ambition can find vent in a paper such as this, than 
to suggest the position and claims of the subject, and slightly to 
indicate a few outlines, or, at least, fragments, of the working 
material. 

In many and the most fundamental respects the two still carry 
in undiminished, perhaps in increasing, clearness, the notes of 
resemblance that beseem a parent and a child. 

Both wish for self-government ; and, however grave the draw- 
backs under which in one or both it exists, the two have, among 
the great nations of the world, made the most effectual advances 
toward the true aim of rational politics. 

They are similarly associated in their fixed idea that the force, 
in which all government takes effect, is to be constantly backed, 
and, as it were, illuminated, by thought in speech and writing. 
The ruler of St. Paul's time " bare the sword " (Rom. xiii : 4). 
Bare it, as the Apostle says, with a mission to do right ; but he 
says nothing of any duty, or any custom, to show by reason that 
he was doing right. Our two governments, whatsoever they do, 



354 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

have to give reasons for it ; not reasons which will convince 
the unreasonable, but reasons which on the whole will con- 
vince the average mind, and carry it unitedly forward in a 
course of action, often, though not always, wise, and carrying 
within itself provisions, where it is unwise, for the correction of 
its own unwisdom before it grow into an intolerable rankness. 
They are governments, not of force only, but of persuasion. 

Many more are the concords, and not less vital than these, of 
the two nations, as expressed in their institutions. They alike 
prefer the practical to the abstract. They tolerate opinion, 
with only a reserve' on behalf of decency; and they desire to 
confine coercion to the province of action, and to leave thought, 
as such, entirely free. They set a high value on liberty for its 
own sake. They desire to give full scope to the principle of self- 
reliance in the people, and they deem self-help to be immeas- 
urably superior to help in any other form ; to be the only help, 
in short, which ought not to be continually, or periodically, put 
upon its trial, and required to make good its title. They mistrust 
and mislike the centralization of power ; and they cherish mu- 
nicipal, local, even parochial liberties, as nursery grounds, not 
only for the production here and there of able men, but for the 
general training of public virtue and independent spirit. They 
regard publicity as the vital air of politics ; through which alone, 
in its freest circulation, opinions can be thrown into common 
stock for the good of all, and the balance of relative rights and 
claims can be habitually and peaceably adjusted. It would be 
difficult in the case of any other pair of nations, to present an 
assemblage of traits at once so common and so distinctive, as 
has been given in this probably imperfect enumeration. 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 355 

There were, however, the strongest reasons why America 
could not grow into a reflection or repetition of England. Passing 
from a narrow island to a continent almost without bounds, the 
colonists at once and vitally altered their conditions of thought 
as well as of existence, in relation to the most important and 
most operative of all social facts, the possession of the soil. In 
England, inequality lies embedded in the very base of the social 
structure ; in America it is a late, incidental, unrecognized pro- 
duct, not of tradition, but of industry and wealth, as they 
advance with various and, of necessity, unequal steps. Heredity, 
seated as an idea in the heart's core of Englishmen, and sus- 
taining far more than it is sustained by those of our institutions 
which express it, was as truly absent from the intellectual and 
moral store, with which the colonists traversed the Atlantic, as 
if it had been some forgotten article in the bills of lading that 
made up their cargoes. Equality combined with liberty, and 
renewable at each descent from one generation to another, like 
a lease with stipulated breaks, was the groundwork of their social 
creed. In vain was it sought, by arrangements such as those 
connected with the name of Baltimore or of Penn, to qualify the 
action of those overpowering forces which so determined the 
case. Slavery itself, strange as it now may seem, failed to 
impair the theory however it may have imported into the prac- 
tice a hideous solecism. No hardier republicanism was gener- 
ated in New England than in the Slave States of the South, 
which produced so many of the great statesmen of America. 

It may be said that the North, and not the South, had the 
larger number of colonists ; and was the centre of those com- 
manding moral influences which gave to the country as a whole 



356 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

its political and moral atmosphere. The type and form of 
manhood for America was supplied neither by the Recusant in 
Maryland, nor by the Cavalier in Virginia, but by the Puritan of 
New England ; and it would have been a form and type widely 
different could the colonization have taken place a couple of 
centuries, or a single century, sooner. Neither the Tudor, nor 
even the Plantagenet period, could have supplied its special 
form. The Reformation was a cardinal factor in its production ; 
and this in more ways than one. 

Before that great epoch, the political forces of the country were 
represented on the whole by the monarch on one side, and the 
people on the other. In the people, setting aside the latent vem 
of Lollardism, there w^as a general homogeneity with respect to 
all that concerned the relation of governors and governed. In 
the deposition of sovereigns, the resistance to abuses, the estab- 
lishment of institutions for the defence of liberty, there were no 
two parties to divide the land. But, with the Reformation, a 
new dualism was sensibly developed among us. Not a dualism 
so violent as to break up the national unity, but yet one so 
marked and substantial, that thenceforward it was very difficult 
for any individual or body of men to represent the entire 
English character, and the old balance of its forces. The 
wrench which severed the Church and people from the Roman 
obedience left for domestic settlement thereafter a tremendous 
internal question, between the historical and the new, which in 
its milder form perplexes us to this day. Except during the 
short reign of Edward VI, the civil power, in various methods 
and degrees, took what may be termed the traditionary side, and 
favored the development of the historical more than the Individ- 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 



357 



ual aspect of the national religion. These elements confronted 
one another during the reigns of the earlier Stuarts, not only 
with obstinacy but with fierceness. There had grown up with 
the Tudors, from a variety of causes, a great exaggeration of 
the idea of royal power ; and this arrived, under James I and 
Charles I, at a rank maturity. Not less, but even more mascu- 
line and determined, was the converse development. Mr. 
Hallam saw, and has said, that at the oiftbreak of the Great 
Rebellion, the old British Constitution was in danger, not from 
one party but from both. In that mixed fabric had once been 
harmonized the ideas, both of religious duty, and of allegiance 
as related to it, which were now held in severance. The 
hardiest and dominating portion of the American colonists 
represented that severance in its extremest form, and had 
•dropped out of the order of the ideas, which they carried across 
the water, all those elements of political Anglicism, which give 
to aristocracy in this country a position only second in strength 
to that of freedom. State and Church alike had frowned upon 
them ; and their strong reaction was a reaction of their entire 
nature, alike of the spiritual and the secular man. All that was 
democratic in the policy of England, and all that was Protes- 
tant in her religion, they carried with them, in pronounced and 
exclusive forms, to a soil and a scene singularly suited for their 
growth. 

It is to the honor of the British Monarchy that, upon the 
whcle, it frankly recognized the facts, and did not pedantically 
endeavor to constrain by artificial and alien limitations the 
growth of the infant states. It is a thing to be remembered 
that the accusations of the colonies in 1776 were entirely 



358 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

levelled at the king actually on the throne, and that a general 
acquittal was thus given by them to every preceding reign. 
Their infancy had been upon the whole what their manhood was 
to be, self-governed and republican. Their Revolution, as we 
call it, was like ours in the main, a vindication of liberties 
inherited and possessed. It was a Conservative revolution ; and 
the happy result was that, notwithstanding the sharpness of the 
collision with the lilother-country, and with domestic loyalism, 
the Thirteen Colonies made provision for their future in con- 
formity, as to all that determined life and manners with the 
recollections of their past. The two Constitutions of the two 
countries express indeed rather the differences than the resem- 
blances of the nations. The one is a thing grown, the other a 
thing made ; the one 2i praxis, the other 2. poiesis : the one the 
offspring of tendency and indeterminate time, the other o^ 
choice and of an epoch. But, as the British Constitution is the' 
most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and 
the long gestation of progressive history, so the American 
Constitution is, so-far as I can see, the most wonderful work 
ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. 
It has had a century of trial, under the pressure of exigencies 
caused by an expansion unexampled in point of rapidity and 
range: and its exemption from formal change, though not 
entire, has certainly proved the sagacity of the constructors, and 
the stubborn strength of the fabric. 

One whose life has been greatly absorbed in working, with 
others, the institutions of his own country, has not had the 
opportunities necessary for the careful and searching scrutiny 
of institutions elsewhere. I should feel, in looking at those of 



KIJV BEYOND SEA. 359 

America, like one \\\.o attempts to scan the stars with the naked 
eye. .My notices can only be few, fahit, and superficial ; they 
are but an introduction to what I have to say of the land of my 
birth. A few sentences will dispose of them. 

America, whose attitude toward England has always been 
masculine and real, has no longer to anticipate at our hands the 
frivolous and offensive criticisms which were once in vogue 
among us. But neither nation prefers (and it would be an ill 
sign if either did prefer) the institutions of the other ; and we 
certainly do not contemplate the great Republic in the spirit of 
mere optimism. We see that it has a marvellous and unex- 
ampled adaptation for its peculiar vocation ; that it must be 
judged, not in the abstract, but under the fore-ordered laws of 
its existence ; that it has purged away the blot with which we 
brought it into the world ; that it gravely and vigorously grap- 
ples with the problem of making a continent into a state ; and 
that it treasures with fondness the traditions of British antiquity, 
which are in truth unconditionally its own, as well, and as much 
as they are ours. The thing that perhaps chiefly puzzles the 
inhabitants of the old country is why the American people should 
permit their entire existence to be continually disturbed by the 
business of the Presidential elections ; and, still more, why they 
should raise to its maximum the intensity of this perturbation by 
providing, as we are told, for what is termed a clean sweep of 
the entire civil service, in all its ranks and departments, on each 
accession of a chief magistrate. We do not perceive why this 
arrangement is more rational than would be a corresponding 
usage in this country on each change of Ministry. Our practice 
is as different as possible. We limit to a few scores of persons 



36o WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

the removals and appointments on these occasions; although 
our Ministries seem to us, not unfrequently, to be more sharply- 
severed from one another in principle and tendency than are the 
successive Presidents of the great Union. 

It would be out of place to discuss in this article occasional 
phenomena of local corruption in the United States, by which 
the nation at large can hardly be touched: or the mysterious 
manipulations of votes for the Presidency, which are now under- 
stood to be under examination ; or the very curious influences 
which are shaping the politics of the negroes and of the South. 
These last are corollaries to the great slave-question : and it 
seems very possible that after a few years we may see most of 
the laborers, both in the Southern States and in England, 
actively addicted to the political support of that section of their 
countrymen who to the last had resisted their emancipation. 

But if there be those in this country who think that American 
democracy means public levity and intemperance, or a lack of 
skill and sagacity in politics, or the absence of self-command 
and self-denial, let them bear in mind a few of the most salient 
and recent facts of history which may profitably be recommended 
to their reflections. We emancipated a million of negroes by 
peaceful legislation ; America liberated four or five millions by 
a bloody civil war : yet the industry and exports of the Southern 
States are maintained, while those of our negro colonies have 
dwindled ; the South enjoys all its franchises, but we have, proh 
pudor I ioxixx^ no better method of providing for peace and order 
in Jamaica, the chief of our islands, than by the hard and 
vulgar, even where needful, expedient of abolishing entirely its 
representative institutions. 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 36 1 

The Civil War compelled the States, both North and South, 
to train and embody a million and a half of men, and to pre- 
sent to view the greatest, instead of the smallest, armed forces in 
the world. Here there was supposed to arise a double danger. 
First, that on a sudden cessation of the war, military life and 
habits could not be shaken off, and, having become rudely 
and widely predominant, would bias the country toward an 
aggressive policy, or, still worse, would find vent in predatory or 
revolutionary operations. Secondly, that a military caste would 
grow up with its habits of exclusiveness and command, and 
would influence the tone of politics in a direction adverse to 
republican freedom. But both apprehensions proved to be 
wholly imaginarv. The innumerable soldiery was at once dis- 
solved. Cincinnatus, no longer an unique example, became the 
commonplace of every day, the type and mould of a nation. 
The whole enormous mass quietly resumed the habits of social 
life. The generals of yesterday were the editors, the secretaries, 
and the solicitors of to-day. The just jealousy of the State gave 
life to the now forgotten maxim of Judge Blackstone, who 
denounced as perilous the erection of a separate profession of 
arms in a free country. The standing army, expanded by the 
heat of civil contest to gigantic dimensions, settled down again 
into the framework of a miniature with the returning tempera- 
ture of civil life, and became a power well-nigh invisible, from its 
minuteness, amidst the powers which sway the movements of a 
society exceeding forty millions. 

More remarkable still was the financial sequel to the great 
conflict. The internal taxation for Federal purposes, which 
before its commencement had been unknown, was raised, in 



362 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

obedience to an exigency of life and death, so as to exceed 
every present and every past example. It pursued and worried 
all the transactions of life. The interest of the American debt 
grew to be the highest in the world, and the capital touched five 
hundred and sixty millions sterling. Here was provided for the 
faith and patience of the people a touchstone of extreme severity. 
In England, at the close of the great French war, the propertied 
classes, who were supreme in Parliament, at once rebelled 
against the Tory Government, and refused to prolong the income 
tax even for a single year. We talked big, both then and now, 
about the payment of our national debt ; but sixty-three years 
have since elapsed, all of them except two called years of peace, 
and we have reduced the huge total by about one ninth ; that is 
to say, by little over one hundred millions, or scarcely more than 
one million and a half a year. This is the conduct of a State 
elaborately digested into orders and degrees, famed for wisdom 
and forethought, and consolidated by a long experience. But 
America continued long to bear, on her unaccustomed and still 
smarting shoulders, the burden of the war taxation. In twelve 
years she has reduced her debt by one hundred and fifty-eight 
millions sterling, or at the rate of thirteen millions for every 
year. In each twelve months she has done what we did in eight 
years ; her self-command, self-denial, and wise forethought for 
the future have been, to say the least, eightfold ours. These are 
facts which redound greatly to her honor ; and the historian will 
record with surprise that an enfranchised nation tolerated bur- 
dens which in this country a selected class, possessed of the 
representation, did not dare to face, and that the most unmiti- 
gated democracy known to the annals of the world resolutely 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 363 

reduced at its own cost prospective liabilities of the State, which 
the aristocratic, and plutocratic, and monarchical government of 
the United Kingdom has been contented ignobly to hand over 
to posterity. And such iacts should be told out. It is our 
fashion so to tell them, against as well as for ourselves ; and the 
record of them may some day be among the means of stirring 
us up to a policy more worthy of the name and fame of England. 

It is true, indeed, that we lie under some heavy and, I fear, 
increasing disadvantages, which amount almost to disabilities. 
Not, however, any disadvantage respecting power, as power is 
commonly understood. But, while America has a nearly homo- 
geneous country, and an admirable division of political labor 
between the States individually and the Federal Government, we 
are, in public affairs, an overcharged and overweighted people.^ 

We have undertaken the cares of empire upon a scale, and 
with a diversity, unexampled in history ; and, as it has not yet 
pleased Providence to endow us with brain-force and anunal 
strength in an equally abnormal proportion, the consequence is 
that we perform the work of government, as to many among its 
more important departments, in a very superficial and slovenly 
manner. The affairs of the three associated kingdoms, with 
their great diversities of law, interest, and circumstance, make 
the government of them, even if they stood alone, a business 
more voluminous, so to speak, than that of any other thirty-three 
millions of civilized men. To lighten the cares of the central 
legislature by judicious devolution, it is probable that much 

1 [This subject has been more fully developed by me in an article on " England's 
Mission," contributed to The Nineteenth Century for September of the present year. 
— W. E. G., December, 1878.] 



364 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

might be done ; but nothing is done, or even attempted to be 
done. The greater colonies have happily attained to a virtual 
self-government ; yet the aggregate mass of business connected 
with our colonial possessions continues to be very large. The 
Indian Empire is of itself a charge so vast, and demanding so 
much thought and care, that if it were the sole transmarine 
appendage to the crown, it would amply tax the best ordinary 
stock of human energies. Notoriously it obtains from the 
Parliament only a small fraction of the attention it deserves. 
Questions affecting individuals, again, or small interests, or 
classes, excite here a greater interest, and occupy a larger share 
of time, than, perhaps, in any other community. In no country, 
I may add, are the interests of persons or classes so favored 
when they compete with those of the public ; and in none are 
they more exacting, or more wakeful to turn this advantage to 
the best account. With the vast extension of our enterprise 
and our trade, comes a breadth of liability not less large, to 
consider every thing that is critical in the afifairs of foreign 
states ; and the real responsibilities thus existing for us, are 
unnaturally inflated for us by fast-growing tendencies toward 
exaggeration of our concern in these matters, and even toward 
setting up fictitious interests in cases where none can discern 
them except ourselves, and such continental friends as practice 
upon our credulity and our fears for purposes of their own. 
Last of all, it is not to be denied that in what I have been say- 
ing, I do not represent the public sentiment. The nation is not 
at all conscious of being overdone. The people see that their 
House of Commons is the hardest-working legislative assembly 
in the world : and, this being so, they assume it is all right. 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 365 

Nothing pays better, in point of popularity, than those gratui- 
tous additions to obligations already beyond human strength, 
which look like accessions or assertion of power ; such as the 
annexation of new territory, or the silly transaction known as 
the purchase of shares in the Suez Canal. 

All my life long I have seen this excess of work as compared 
with the power to do it ; but the evil has increased with the 
surfeit of wealth, and there is no sign that the increase is near 
its end. The people of this country are a very strong people ; 
but there is no strength that can permanently endure, without 
provoking inconvenient consequences, this kind of political 
debauch. It may be hoped, but it cannot be predicted, that the 
mischief will be encountered and subdued at the point where it 
will have become sensibly troublesome, but will not have grown 
to be quite irremediable. 

The main and central point of interest, however, in the insti- 
tutions of a country is the manner in which it draws together 
and compounds the public forces in the balanced action of the 
State. It seems plain that the formal arrangements for this 
purpose in America are very different from ours. It may even 
be a question whether they are not, in certain respects, less 
popular; whether our institutions do not give more rapid effect, 
than those of the Union, to any formed opinion, and resolved 
intention, of the nation. 

In the formation of the Federal Government we seem to 
perceive three stages of distinct advancement. First, the for- 
mation of the Confederation, under the pressure of the War of 
Independence. Secondly, the Constitution, which placed the 
Federal Government in defined and direct relation with the 



366 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

people inhabiting the several States. Thirdly, the struggle with 
the South, which for the first time, and definitely, decided that 
to the Union, through its Federal organization, and not to the 
State governments, were reserved all the questions not decided 
and disposed of by the express provisions of the Constitution 
itself.^ The great arcanum imperii, which with us belongs to the 
three branches of the Legislature, and which is expressed by 
the current phrase, " omnipotence of Parliament," thus became 
the acknowledged property of the three branches of the Federal 
Legislature ; and the old and respectable doctrine of State 
independence is now no more than an archaeological relic, a 
piece of historical antiquarianism. Yet the actual attributions 
of the State authorities cover by far the largest part of the 
province of government ; and by this division of labor and 
authority, the problem of fixing for the nation a political 
centre of gravity is divested of a large part of its difficulty and 
danger, in some proportions to the limitations of the working 
precinct. 

Within that precinct, the initiation as well as the final sanc- 
tion in the great business of finance is made over to the popular 
branch of the Legislature, and a most interesting question arises 
upon the comparative merits of this arrangement, and of our 



* [This is a proposition of great importance in a disputed subject-matter ; and con- 
sequently I liave not announced it in a dogmatic manner, but as a portion of what we 
" seem to perceive " in the progress of the American Constitution. It expresses an 
opinion formed b}' me upon an examination of the original documents, and with some 
attention to the history, which I have always considered, and have often recommended 
to others, as one of the most fruitful studies of modern politics. This is not the 
proper occasion to develop its grounds: but I may say that I am not at all disposed 
to surrender it in deference to one or two rather contemptuous critics. — W. E. G., 
December, 1868.] 



KIN BEYOXD SEA. 367 

own method, which theoretically throws upon the Crown the 
responsibility of initiating public charge, and under which, until 
a recent period, our practice was in actual and even close 
correspondence with this theory. 

We next come to a difference still more marked. The Fed- 
eral Executive is born anew of the nation at the end of each four 
years, and dies at the end. But, during the course of those 
years, it is independent, in the person both of the President and 
of his Ministers, alike of the people, of their representatives, 
and of that remarkable body, the most remarkable of all the 
inventions of modern politics, the Senate of the United States. 
In this important matter, whatever be the relative excellencies 
and defects of the British and American systems, it is most cer- 
tain that nothing would induce the people of this country, or 
even the Tory portion of them, to exchange our own for theirs. 
It may, indeed, not be obvious to the foreign eye what is the 
exact difference of the two. Both the representative chambers 
hold the power of the purse. But in America its conditions are 
such that it does not operate in any way on behalf of the 
Chamber or of the nation, as against the Executive. In Eng- 
land, on the contrary, its efficiency has been such that it has 
worked out for itself channels of effective operation, such as to 
dispense with its direct use, and avoid the inconveniences which 
might be attendant upon that use. A vote of the House of 
Commons, declaring a withdrawal of its confidence, has always 
sufficed for the purpose of displacing a Ministry ; nay, persistent 
obstruction of its measures, and even lighter causes, have con- 
veyed the hint, which has been obediently taken. But the 
people, how is it with them ? Do not the people in England part 



368 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

with their power, and make it over to the House of Commons, 
as completely as the American people part with it to the Presi- 
dent ? They give it over for four years : we for a period which 
on the average is somewhat more : they, to resume it at a fixed 
time ; we, on an unfixed contingency, and at a time vv'hich will 
finally be determined, not according to the popular will, but 
according to the views which a Ministry may entertain of its 
duty or convenience. 

. All this is true ; but it is not the whole truth. In the United 
Kingdom, the people as such cannot commonly act upon the 
Ministry as such. But mediately, though not immediately, they 
gain the end : for they can work upon that which works upon 
the Ministry, namely, on the House of Commons. Firstly, they 
have not renounced, like the American people, the exercise of 
their power for a given time ; and they are at all times free by 
speech, petition, public meeting, to endeavor to get it back in 
full by bringing about a dissolution. Secondly, in a Parliament 
with nearly 660 members, vacancies occur with tolerable fre- 
quency ; and, as they are commonly filled up forthwith, they 
continually modify the color of the Parliament, conformably, not 
to the past, but to the present feeling of the nation ; or, at least, 
of the constituency, which for practical purposes is different 
indeed, yet not very different. But, besides exercising a limited 
positive influence on the present, they supply a much less limited 
indication of the future. Of the members who at a given time 
sit in the House of Commons, the vast majority, probably more 
than nine-tenths, have the desire to sit there again, after a disso- 
lution which may come at any moment. They therefore study 
political weather-wisdom, and in varying degrees adapt them- 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 369 

selves to the indications of the sky. It will now be readily 
perceived how the popular sentiment in England, so far as it is 
awake, is not meanly provided with the ways of making itself 
respected, whether for the purpose of displacing and replacing 
a Ministr}', or of constraining it (as sometimes happens) to alter 
or reverse its policy sufficiently, at least, to conjure down the 
gathering and muttering storm. 

It is true, indeed, that every nation is of necessity, to a great 
extent, in the condition of the sluggard with regard to public 
policy ; hard to rouse, harder to keep aroused, sure after a little 
while to sink back into his slumber : — 

" Pressitigue jacentem, 
Dulcis et alta quies, placidseque simillima morti." 

— Mn., vi, 522, 

The people have avast, but an encumbered power; and, in 
their struggles with overweaning authority, or with property, the 
excess of force, which they undoubtedly possess, is more than 
counterbalanced by the constant wakefulness of the adversary, 
by his knowledge of their weakness, and by his command of 
opportunity. But this is a fault lying rather in the conditions of 
human life than in political institutions. There is no known 
mode of making attention and inattention equal in their results. 
It is enough to say that in England, when the nation can attend, 
it can prevail. So we may say, then, that in the American 
Union the Federal Executive is independent for each four years 
both of the Congress and of the people. But the British Min- 
istry is largely dependent on the people whenever the people 
firmly will it; and is always dependent on the House of Com- 
mons, except of course when it can safely and effectually appeal 
to the people. 



370 WILLIAM ElVART GLADSTONE. 

So far, so good. But if we wish really to understand the man- 
ner in which the Queen's Government over the British Empire is 
carried on, we must now prepare to examine into some sharper 
contrasts than any which our path has yet brought into view. 
The power of the American Executive resides in the person of 
the actual President, and passes from him to his successor. His 
Ministers, grouped around him, are the servants, not only of his 
ofBce, but of his mind. The intelligence, which carries on the 
Government, has its main seat in him. The responsibility of 
. failures is understood to fall on him ; and it is round his head 
that success sheds its halo. The American Government is 
described truly as a Government composed of three members, of 
three powers distinct from one another. The English Govern- 
ment is likewise so described, not truly, but conventionally. For 
in the English Government there has gradually formed itself a 
fourth power, entering into and sharing the vitality of each of 
the other three, and charged with the business of holding them 
in harmony as they march. 

This Fourth Power is the Ministry, or more properly the 
Cabinet. For the rest of the Ministry is subordinate and ancil- 
lary ; and, though it largely shares in many departments the 
labors of the Cabinet, yet it has only a secondary and derivative 
share in the higher responsibilities. No account of the present 
British Constitution is worth having which does not take this 
Fourth Power largely and carefully into view. And yet it is not a 
distinct power, made up of elements unknown to the other three ; 
any more than a sphere contains elements other than those refer- 
able to the three co-ordinates, which determine the position of 
every point in space. The Fourth Power is parasitical to the three 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 37 1 

Others ; and lives upon their Ufe, without any separate existence. 
One portion of it forms a part, which may be termed an integral 
part, of the House of Lords, another of the House of Com- 
mons ; and the two conjointly, nestling within the precinct of 
Royalty, form the inner Council of the Crown, assuming the 
whole of its responsibilities, and in consequence wielding, as a 
rule, its powers. The Cabinet is the threefold hinge that connects 
together for action the British Constitution of King or Queen, 
Lords and Commons. Upon it is concentrated the whole strain 
of the Government, and it constitutes from day to day the true 
centre of gravity for the working system of the State, although 
the ultimate superiority of force resides in the representative 
chamber. 

There is no statute or legal usage of this country which 
requires that the Ministers of the Crown should hold seats in 
the one or the other House of Parliament. It is perhaps on 
this account that, while most of my countrymen would, as I sup- 
pose, declare it to be a becoming and convenient custom, yet 
comparatively few are aware how near the seat of life the ob- 
servance lies, how closely it is connected with the equipoise and 
unity of the social forces. It is rarely departed from, even in an 
individual case ; never, as far as my knowledge goes, on a 
wider scale. From accidental circumstances it happened that I 
was Secretary of State between December 1845 and July 1846, 
without a seat in the House of Commons. This (which did not 
pass wholly without challenge) is, I believe, by much the most 
notable instance for the last fifty years ; and it is only within the 
last fifty years that our Constitutional system has completely 
settled down. Before the reform of Parliament it was always 



372 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

easy to find a place for a Minister excluded from his seat ; as Sir 
Robert Peel, for example, ejected from Oxford University, at 
once found refuge and repose at Tamworth. I desire to fix 
attention on the identification, in this country, of the Minister 
with the member of a House of Parliament. 

It is, as to the House of Commons, especially, an inseparable 
and vital part of our system. The association of the Ministers 
with the Parliament, and through the House of Commons with 
the people, is the counterpart of their association as Ministers 
with the Crown and the prerogative. The decisions that they 
take are taken under the competing pressure of a bias this way 
and a bias that way, and strictly represent what is termed in 
mechanics the composition of forces. Upon them, thus placed, 
it devolves to provide that the House of Parliament shall loyally 
counsel and serve the Crown, and that the Crown shall act 
strictly in accordance with its obligations to the nation. I will 
not presume to say whether the adoption of the rule in America 
would or would not lay the foundation of a great change in the 
Federal Constitution ; but I am quite sure that the abrogation of 
it in England w^ould either alter the form of government, or 
bring about a crisis. That it conduces to the personal comfort 
of Ministers, I will not undertake to say. The various currents 
of political and social influences meet edgeways in their persons, 
much like the conflicting tides in St. George's Channel or the 
Straits of Dover ; for, while they are the ultimate regulators of 
the relations between the Crown on the one side, and the people 
through the Houses of Parliament on the other, they have no 
authority vested in them to coerce or censure either way. Their 
attitude toward the Houses must always be that of deference ; 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 373 

their language that of respect, if not submission. Still more 
must their attitude and language toward the Sovereign be the 
same in prir.ciple, and yet more marked in form ; and this, 
though upon them lies the ultimate responsibility of deciding 
what shall be done in the Crown's name in every branch of 
administration, and every department of policy, coupled only 
with the alternative of ceasing to be Ministers, if what they may 
advisedly deem the requisite power of action be denied them. 

In the ordinary administration of the government, the Sover- 
eign personally is, so to speak, behind the scenes; performing, 
indeed, many personal acts by the Sign-manual, or otherwise, 
but, in each and all of them, covered by the counter-signature 
or advice of ministers, who stand between the august personage 
and the people. There is, accordingly, no more power, under 
the form of our Constitution, to assail the monarch in his per- 
sonal capacity, or to assail through him, the line of succession 
to the Crown, than there is at chess to put the king in check. 
In truth, a good deal, though by no means the whole, of the 
philosophy of the British Constitution is represented in this 
central point of the wonderful game, against which the only 
reproach — the reproach of Lord Bacon — is that it is hardly a 
relaxation, but rather a serious tax upon the brain. 

The Sovereign in England is the symbol of the nation's unity, 
and the apex of the social structure ; the maker (with advice) of 
the laws ; the supreme governor of the Church ; the fountain of 
justice ; the sole source of honor; the person to whom all mili- 
tary, all naval, all civil service is rendered. The Sovereign 
owns very large properties; receives and holds, in law, the entire 
revenue of the State ; appoints and dismisses Ministers ; makes 



374 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

treaties ; pardons crime, or abates its punishment ; wages war, or 
concludes peace ; summons and dissolves the Parliament ; exer- 
cises these vast powers for the most part without any specified 
restraint of law ; and yet enjoys, in regard to these and every 
other function, an absolute immunity from consequences. There 
is no provision in the law of the United Empire, or in the 
machinery of the Constitution, for calling the sovereign to 
account ; and only in one solitary and improbable, but perfectly 
defined, case — that of his submitting to the jurisdiction of the 
Pope — is he deprived by Statute of the Throne. Setting 
aside that peculiar exception, the offspring of a necessity still 
freshly felt when it was made, the Constitution might seem to 
be founded on the belief of a real infallibility in its head. Less, 
at any rate, cannot be said than this. Regal right has, since 
the Revolution of 1688, been expressly founded upon contract ; 
and the breach of that contract destroys the title to the alle- 
giance of the subject. But no provision other than the gen- 
eral rule of hereditary succession, is made to meet either this 
case, or any other form of political miscarriage or misdeed. It 
seems as though the Genius of the Nation would not stain its 
lips by so much as the mere utterance of such a word ; nor can 
we put this state of facts into language more justly than by 
saying that the Constitution would regard the default of the 
Monarch, with his heirs, as the chaos of the State, and would 
simply trust to the inherent energies of the several orders of 
society for its legal reconstruction. 

The original authorship of the representative system is com- 
monly accorded to the English race. More clear and indispu- 
table i<5 its title to the great political discovery of Constitutional 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 



375 



Kingship. And a very great discovery it is. Whether it is 
destined, in any future day, to minister in its integrity to the 
needs of the New World, it may be hard to say. In that impor- 
tant branch of its utility which is negative, it completely serves 
the purposes of the many strong and rising Colonies of Great 
Britain, and saves them all the perplexities and perils attendant 
upon successions to the headship of the Executive. It presents 
to them, as it does to us, the symbol of unity, and the object of 
all our political veneration, which we love to find rather in a 
person, than in an abstract entity, like the State. But the Old 
World, at any rate, still is, and may long continue, to constitute 
the living centre of civilization, and to hold the primacy of the 
race ; and of this great society the several members approxi- 
mate, in a rapidly extending series, to the practice and idea of 
Constitutional Kingship. The chief States of Christendom, 
with only two exceptions, have, with more or less distinctness, 
adopted it. Many of them, both great and small, have thor- 
oughly assimilated it to their system. The autocracy of Russia, 
and the Republic of France, each of them congenial to the 
present wants of the respective countries, may yet, hereafter, 
gravitate toward the principle, which elsewhere has developed 
so large an attractive power. Should the current, that has 
prevailed through the last half-century, maintain its direction 
and its strength, another fifty years may see all Europe adhering 
to the theory and practice of this beneficent institution, and 
peaceably sailing in the wake of England. 

No doubt, if tried by an ideal standard, it is open to criticism. 
Aristotle and Plato, nay, Bacon, and perhaps Leibnitz, would 
have scouted it as a scientific abortion. Some men would draw 



^y6 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

disparaging comparisons between the mediaeval and the modern 
King. In the person of the first was normally embodied the 
force paramount over all others in the country, and on him was 
laid a weight of responsibility and toil so tremendous, that his 
function seems always to border upon the superhuman ; that 
his life commonly wore out before the natural term ; and that 
an indescribable majesty, dignity, and interest surround him in 
his misfortunes, nay, almost in his degradation ; as, for instance, 
amidst 

" The shrieks of death, through Berkeley's roof that ring, 
Shrieks of an agonizing King." i 

For this concentration of power, toil, and liability, milder 
realities have now been substituted; and Ministerial responsibil- 
ity comes between the Monarch and every public trial and 
necessity, like armor between the flesh and the spear that would 
seek to pierce it ; only this is an armor itself also fleshy, at once 
living and impregnable. It may be said, by an adverse critic, 
that the Constitutional Monarch is only a depository of power, 
as an armory is a depository of arms ; but that those who wield 
the arms, and those alone, constitute the true governing author- 
ity. And no doubt this is so far true, that the scheme aims at 
associating in the work of government with the head of the 
State the persons best adapted to meet the wants and wishes of 
the people, under the conditions that the several aspects of 
supreme power shall be severally allotted ; dignity and visible 
authority shall lie wholly with the wearer of the crown, but 
labor mainly, and responsibility wholly, with its servants. From 
hence, without doubt, it follows that should differences arise, 

1 Grav's " Bard." 



KIN BEYOiVD SEA. 377 

it is the will of those in whose minds the work of government 
is elaborated, that in the last resort must prevail. From mere 
labor, power may be severed ; but not from labor joined with 
responsibility. This capital and vital consequence flows out 
of the principle that the political action of the Monarch shall 
everywhere be mediate and conditional upon the concurrence 
of confidential advisers. It is impossible to reconcile any, 
even the smallest, abatement of this doctrine, with the perfect, 
absolute immunity of the Sovereign from consequences. There 
can be in England no disloyalty more gross, as to its effects, 
than the superstition which affects to assign to the Sovereign 
a separate, and so far as separate, transcendental sphere of 
political action. Anonymous servility has, indeed, in these 
last days, hinted such a doctrine ; -^ but it is no more practicable 
to make it thrive in England, than to rear the jungles of Bengal 
on Salisbury Plain. 

There is, indeed, one great and critical act, the responsibility 
for which falls momentarily or provisionally upon the Sovereign ; 
it is the dismissal of an existing Ministry, and the appointment 
of a new one. This act is usually performed with the aid drawn 
from authentic manifestations of public opinion, mostly such as 
are obtained through the votes or conduct of the House of 
Commons. Since the reign of George III there has been but 
one change of Ministry in which the Monarch acted without 
the support of these indications. It was w'hen William IV, in 
1834, dismissed the Government of Lord Melbourne, which was 
known to be supported, though after a lukewarm fashion, by a 
large majority of the existing House of Commons. But the 

1 Quarterly Review, April, 187S, Art. I. 



378 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

royal responsibility was, according to the doctrine of our Consti- 
tution, completely taken over, ex post facto, by Sir Robert Peel, 
as the person who consented, on the call of the King, to take 
Lord Melbourne's office. Thus, though the act was rash, and 
hard to justify, the doctrine of personal immunity was in no wa}'' 
endangered. And here we may notice, that in theory an abso- 
lute personal immunity implies a correlative limitation of power, 
greater than is always found in practice. It can hardly be said 
that the King's initiative left to Sir R, Peel a freedom perfectly 
unimpaired. And, most certainly, it was a very real exercise of 
personal power. The power did not suffice for its end, which 
was to overset the Liberal predominance ; but it very nearly 
sufficed. Unconditionally entitled to dismiss the Ministers, the 
Sovereign can, of course, choose his own opportunity. He may 
defy the Parliament, if he can count upon the people. William 
IV, in the year 1834, had neither Parliament nor people with 
him. His act was within the limits of the Constitution, for it 
was covered by the responsibility of the acceding Ministry. 
But it reduced the Liberal majority from a number considerably 
beyond three hundred to about thirty ; and it constituted an 
exceptional but very real and large action on the politics of the 
country, by the direct will of the King. I speak of the immedi- 
ate effects. Its eventual result may have been different, for it 
converted a large disjointed mass into a smaller but organized 
and sufficient force, which held the fortress of power for the six 
years 1835-41. On this view it may be said that, if the Royal 
intervention anticipated and averted decay from natural causes, 
then with all its immediate success, it defeated its own real aim. 
But this power of dismissing a Ministry at will, large as it may 



KIiV BEYOND SEA. 379 

be under given circumstances, is neither the safest nor the only 
power which, in the ordinary course of things, falls Constitu- 
tionally to the personal share of the wearer of the crown. He 
is entitled, on all subjects coming before the Ministry, to knowl- 
edge and opportunities of discussion, unlimited save by the iron 
necessities of business. Though decisions must ultimately con- 
form to the sense of those who are to be responsible for them, 
5^et their business is to inform and persuade the Sovereign, not 
to overrule him. Were it possible for him, within the limits of 
human time and strength, to enter actively into all public trans- 
actions, he would be fully entitled to do so. What is actually 
submitted is supposed to be the most fruitful and important 
part, the cream of affairs. In the discussion of them, the 
Monarch has more than one advantage over his advisers. He 
is permanent, they are fugitive ; he speaks from the vantage- 
ground of a station unapproachably higher; he takes a calm 
and leisurely survey, while they are worried with the prepara- 
tory stages, and their force is often impaired by the pressure of 
countless detail. He may be, therefore, a weighty factor in all 
deliberations of State. Every discovery of a blot, that the 
studies of the Sovereign in the domain of business enable him 
to make, strengthens his hands and enhances his authority. It 
is plain, then, that there is abundant scope for mental activity to 
be at work under the gorgeous robes of Royalty. 

This power spontaneously takes the form of influence ; and 
the amount of it depends on a variety of circumstances ; on 
talent, experience, tact, weight of character, steady, untiring 
industry, and habitual presence at the seat of government. In 
proportion as any of these might fail, the real and legitimate 



38o 



WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 



influence of the Monarch over the course of affairs would 
diminish ; in proportion as they attain to fuller action, it would 
increase. It is a moral, not a coercive, influence. It operates 
through the will and reason of the Ministry, not over or 
against them. It would be an evil and a perilous day for the 
Monarchy, were any prospective possessor of the Crown to 
assume or claim for himself final, or preponderating, or even 
independent power, in any one department of the State. The 
ideas and practice of the time of George III, whose will in 
certain matters limited the action of the Ministers, cannot be 
revived, otherwise than by what would be, on their part, nothing 
less than a base compliance, a shameful subserviency, dangerous 
to the public weal, and in the highest degree disloyal to the 
dynasty. Because, in every free State, for every public act, 
some one must be responsible ; and the question is, Who shall 
it be ? The British Constitution answers : The Minister, and 
the Minister exclusively. That he maybe responsible, all action 
must be fully shared by him. Sole action, for the Sovereign, 
would mean undefended, unprotected action ; the armor of 
irresponsibility would not cover the whole body against sword 
or spear ; a head would project beyond the awning, and would 
invite a sunstroke. 

The reader, then, will clearly see that there is no distinction 
more vital to the practice of the British Constitution, or to a 
right judgment upon it, than the distinction between the Sover- 
eign and the Crown. The Crown has large prerogatives, end- 
less functions essential to the daily action, and even the life, 
of the State. To place them in the hands of persons who 
should be mere tools in a Royal will, would expose those 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 38 1 

powers to constant unsupported collision with the living forces of 
the nation, and to a certain and irremediable crash. They are 
therefore entrusted to men, who must be prepared to answer for 
the use they make of them. This ring of responsible Ministe- 
rial agency forms a fence around the person of the Sovereign, 
which has thus far proved impregnable to all assaults. The 
august personage, who from time to time may rest within it, and 
who may possess the art of turning to the best account the 
countless resources of the position, is no dumb and senseless 
idol ; but, together with real and very large means of influence 
upon polic}', enjoys the undivided reverence which a great 
people feels for its head ; and is likewise the first and by far the 
weightiest among the forces, which greatly mould, by example 
and legitimate authority, the manners, nay the morals, of a 
powerful aristocracy and a wealthy and highly trained societ}'. 
The social influence of a Sovereign, even if it stood alone, would 
be an enormous attribute. The English people are not believers 
in equality; they do not, with the famous Declaration of July 4, 
1776, think it to be a self-evident truth that all men are born 
equal. They hold rather the reverse of that proposition. At 
any rate, in practice, they are what I may call determined 
inequalitarians ; nay, in some cases, even without knowing it. 
Their natural tendency, from the very base of British society, 
and through all its strongly built gradations, is to look upward : 
they are not apt to " untune degree." The Sovereign is the 
highest height of the system, is, in that system, like Jupiter 
among the Romans gods, first without a second, 

" Nee viget quicquam simile aut secundum. " ' 
» Hor. Od., I, xii, iS. 



382 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Not, like Mont Blanc, with rivals in his neighborhood ; but 
like Ararat or Etna, towering alone and unapproachable. The 
step downward from the King to the second person in the realm 
is not like that from the second to the third : it is more even 
than a stride, for it traverses a gulf. It is the wisdom of the 
British Constitution to lodge the personality of its chief so high, 
that none shall under any circumstances be tempted to vie, no, 
nor dream of vieing, with it. The office, however, is not con- 
fused, though it is associated, with the person ; and the eleva- 
tion of official dignity in the Monarch of these realms has now for 
a testing period worked well, in conjunction with the limitation 
of merely personal power. 

In the face of the country, the Sovereign and the Ministers 
are an absolute unity. The one may concede to the other ; 
but the limit of concessions by the Sovereign is at the point 
where he becomes willing to try the experiment of changing his 
Government, and the limit of concessions by the Minister is at the 
point where they become unwilling to bear, what in all circum- 
stances they must bear while they remain Ministers, the undi- 
vided responsibility of all that is done in the Crown's name. 
But it is not with the Sovereign only that the Ministry must be 
welded into identity. It has a relation to sustain to the House 
of Lords ; which need not, however, be one of entire unity, for 
the House of Lords, though a great power in the State, and 
able to cause great embarrassment to an Administration, is not 
able by a vote to doom it to capital punishment. Only for fif- 
teen years, out of the last fifty, has the Ministry of the day 
possessed the confidence of the House of Lords. On the confi- 
dence of the House of Commons it is immediately and vitally 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 383 

dependent. This confidence it must always possess, either abso- 
lutely from identity of political color, or relatively and condi- 
tionally. This last case arises when an accidental dislocation 
of the majority in the Chamber has put the machine for the 
moment out of gear, and the unsafe experiment of a sort of 
provisional government, doomed on the one hand to be feeble, 
or tempted on the other to be dishonest, is tried ; much as the 
Roman Conclave has sometimes been satisfied with a provisional 
Pope, deemed likely to live for the time necessary to reunite the 
factions of the prevailing party. 

I have said that the Cabinet is essentially the regulator of 
the relations between King, Lords, and Commons ; exercising 
functionally the powers of the first, and incorporated, in the 
persons of its members, with the second and the third. It is, 
therefore, itself a great power. But let no one suppose it is the 
greatest. In a balance nicely poised, a small weight may turn 
the scale ; i-^nd the helm that directs the ship is not stronger than 
the ship. It is a cardinal axiom of the modern British Consti- 
tution, that the House of Commons is the greatest of the powers 
of the State. It might, by a base subserviency, fling itself at 
the feet of a Monarch or a Minister ; it might, in a season of 
exhaustion, allow the slow persistence of the Lords, ever eyeing 
it as Lancelot was eyed by Modred, to invade its just province 
by baffling its action at some time propitious for the purpose. 
But no Constitution can anywhere keep either Sovereign, or 
Assembly, or nation, true to its trust and to itself. All that can 
be done has been done. The Commons are armed with ample 
powers of self-defence. If they use their powers properly, they 
can only be mastered by a recurrence to the people, and the way 



384 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

in which the appeal can succeed is by the choice of another 
House of Commons more agreeable to the national temper. 
Thus the sole appeal from the verdict of the House is a rightful 
appeal to those from whom it received its commission. 

This superiority in power among the great State forces was, in 
truth, established even before the House of Commons became 
what it now is, representative of the people throughout its entire 
area. In the early part of the century, a large part of its mem- 
bers virtually received their mandate from members of the 
Peerage, or from the Crown, or by the direct action of money 
on a mere handful of individuals, or, as in Scotland, for example, 
from constituencies whose limited numbers and upper-class 
sympathies usually shut out popular influences. A real suprem- 
acy belonged to the House as a whole ; but the forces of w-hich 
it was compounded were not all derived from the people, and 
the aristocratic power had found out the secret of asserting 
itself within the walls of the popular chamber, in the dress and 
through the voices of its members. Many persons of gravity 
and weight saw great danger in a measure of change liice the 
first Reform Act, which left it to the Lords to assert themselves, 
thereafter, by an external force, instead of through a share in 
the internal composition of a body so formidable. But the 
result proved that they were sufficiently to exercise, through the 
popular will and choice, the power which they had formerly put 
in action without its sanction, though within its proper precinct 
and with its title falsely inscribed. 

The House of Commons is superior, and by far superior, in 
the force of its political attributes, to any other single power in 
the State. But it is watched ; it is criticized ; it is hemmed in 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 385 

and about by a multitude of other forces : the force, first of all, 
of the House of Lords, the force of opinion from day to day, 
particularly of the highly anti-popular opinion of the leisured 
men of the metropolis, who, seated close to the scene of action, 
wield an influence greatly in excess of their just claims ; the 
force of the classes and professions ; the just and useful force 
of the local authorities in their various orders and places. 
Never was the great problem more securely solved, which recog- 
nizes the necessity of a paramount power in the body politic to 
enable it to move, but requires for it a depository such that it 
shall be safe against invasion, and yet inhibited from aggression. 
The old theories of a mixed government, and of the three 
powers, coming down from the age of Cicero, when set by the 
side of the living British Constitution, are cold, crude, and 
insufiicient to a degree that makes them deceptive. Take them, 
for example, as represented, fairly enough, by Voltaire : the pict- 
ure drawn by him is for us nothing but a puzzle : — 

" Aux murs de Vestminster on voit paraitre ensemble 
Trois pouvoirs etonnes du noeud qui las rassemble, 
Les deputes du peuple, les grandes, et le Roi, 
Divises d' interet, reunis par la Loi." 1 

There is here lacking an amalgam, a reconciling power, what 
may be called a clearing-house of political forces, which shall 
draw into itself every thing, and shall balance and adjust every 
th'ng, and ascertaining the net result, let it pass on freely for the 
fulfilment of the purposes of the great social union. Like a 
stout buffer-spring, it receives all shocks, and within it their 
opposing elements neutralize one another. This is the function 

1 Henriade, I. 



386 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

of the British Cabinet. It is perhaps the most curious formation 
in the political world of modern times, not for its dignity, but 
for its subtlety, its elasticity, and its many-sided diversity of 
power. It is the complement of the entire system ; a system 
which appears to want nothing but a thorough loyalty in the 
persons composing its several parts, with a reasonable intelli- 
gence, to insure its bearing, without fatal damage, the wear and 
tear of ages yet to come. 

It has taken more than a couple of centuries to bring the 
British Cabinet to its present accuracy and fulness of develop- 
ment ; for the first rudiments of it may sufficiently be discerned 
in the reign of Charles I. Under Charles II it had fairly 
started from its embryo ; and the name is found both in Claren- 
don and in the Diary of Pepys.-' It was for a long time without 
a Ministerial head ; the King was the head. While this arrange- 
ment subsisted, constitutional government could be but half 
established. Of the numerous titles of the Revolution of 1688 
to respect, not the least remarkable is this, that the great families 
of the country, and great powers of the State, made no effort, 
as they might have done, in the hour of its weakness, to aggran- 
dize themselves at the expense of the crown. Nevertheless, for 
various reasons, and among them because of the foreign origin, 
and absences from time to time, of several Sovereigns, the 
course of events tended to give force to the organs of Govern- 
ment actually on the spot, and thus to consolidate, and also to 
uplift, this as yet novel creation. So late, however, as the 
impeachment of Sir Robert Walpole, his friends thought it 

1 Vol. V, pp. 94, 95. Ed. London, 1S77. 






KIN BEYOND SEA. ■^^J 

exiDcdient to urge on his behalf, in the House of Lords, that he 
had never presumed to constitute himself a Prime-Minister, 

The breaking down of the great ofifices of State by throwing 
them into commission, and last among them of the Lord High 
Treasurership after the time of Harley, Earl of Oxford, tended, 
and may probably have been meant, to prevent or retard the 
formation of a recognized Chiefship in the Ministry; which 
even now we have not learned to designate by a true English 
word, though the use of the imported phrase " Premier " is at 
least as old as the poetry of Burns. Nor can anything be more 
curiously characteristic of the political genius of the people, than 
the present position of this most important official personage. 
Departmentally, he is no more than the first-named of five 
persons, by whom jointly the powers of the Lord Treasurership 
are taken to be exercised ; he is not their master, or, otherwise 
than by mere priority, their head : and he has no special function 
or prerogative under the formal constitution of the office. He 
has no official rank except that of Privy Councillor. Eight 
members of the Cabinet, including five Secretaries of State, and 
several other members of the Government, take official prece- 
dence of him. His rights and duties as head of the Adminis- 
tration are nowhere recorded. He is almost, if not altogether, 
unknown to the Statute Law, 

Nor is the position of the body, over which he presides, less 
singular than his own. The Cabinet wields, with partial excep- 
tions, the powers of the Privy Council, besides having a standing 
ground in relation to the personal will of the Sovereign, far 
beyond what the Privy Council ever held or claimed. Yet it has 
no connection with the Privy Council, except that every one, on 



388 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

first becoming a member of the Cabinet, is, if not belonging to 
it already, sworn a member of that body. There are other sec- 
tions of the Privy Council, forming regular Committees for Edu- 
cation and for Trade. But the Cabinet has not even this degree 
of formal sanction, to sustain its existence. It lives and acts 
simply by understanding, without a single line of written law or 
constitution to determine its relations to the Monarch, or to the 
Parliament, or to the nation ; or the relations of its members to 
one another, or to their head. It sits in the closest secrecy. 
There is no record of its proceedings, nor is there any one to 
hear them, except upon the very rare occasions when some 
important functionary, for the most part military or legal, is 
introduced, pro hac vice, for the purpose of giving to it necessary 
information. 

Every one of its members acts in no less than three capaci- 
ties : as administrator of a department of State ; as member of 
a legislative chamber ; and as a confidential adviser of the 
Crown. Two at least of them add to those three characters a 
fourth ; for in each House of Parliament it is indispensable that 
one of the principal Ministers should be what is termed its 
Leader. This is an office the most indefinite of all, but not the 
least important. With very little of defined prerogative, the 
Leader suggests, and in a great degree fixes, the course of all 
principal matters of business, supervises and keeps in harmony 
the action of his colleagues, takes the initiative in matters of 
ceremonial procedure, and advises the House in every difficulty 
as it arises. The first of these, which would be of but sec- 
ondary consequence where the assembly had time enough for all 
its duties, is of the utmost weight in our overcharged House of 



KIi\ BEYOND SEA. 389 

Commons, where, notwithstanding all its energy and all its dili- 
gence, for one thing of consequence that is done, five or ten are 
despairingly postponed. The overweight, again, of the House 
of Commons is apt, other things being equal, to bring its Leader 
inconveniently near in power to a Prime-Minister who is a Peer. 
He can play off the House of Commons against his chief ; and 
instances might be cited, though they are happily most rare, 
when he has served him very ugly tricks. 

The nicest of all the adjustments involved in the working of 
the British Government is that which determines, without for- 
mally defining, the internal relations of the Cabinet. On the 
one hand, while each Minister is an adviser of the Crown, the 
Cabinet is a unity, and none of its members can advise as an 
individual, without, or in opposition actual or presumed to, his 
colleagues. On the other hand, the business of the State is a 
hundred-fold too great in volume to allow of the actual passing 
of the whole under the view of the collected Ministry. It is 
therefore a prime office of discretion for each Minister to settle 
what are the departmental acts in which he can presume the 
concurrence of his colleagues, and in what more delicate, or 
weighty, or peculiar cases, he must positively ascertain it. So 
much for the relation of each Minister to the Cabinet ; but here 
we touch the point which involves another relation, perhaps the 
least known of all, his relation to its head. 

The head of the British Government is not a Grand Vizier. 
He has no powers, properly so called, over his colleagues : on 
the rare occasions, when a Cabinet determines its course by the 
votes of its members, his vote counts only as one of theirs. 
But they are appointed and dismissed by the Sovereign on his 



390 ■ WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

advice. In a perfectly organized administration, such for exam- 
ple as was that of Sir Robert Peel in 1841-6, nothing of great 
importance is matured, or would even be projected, in any 
department without his personal cognizance ; and any weighty 
business would commonly go to him before being submitted to 
the Cabinet. He reports to the Sovereign its proceedings, aud 
he also has many audiences of the august occupant of the 
Throne. He is bound in these reports and audiences, not to 
counterwork the Cabinet ; not to divide it ; not to undermine 
the position of any of his colleagues in the Royal favor. If he 
departs in any degree from strict adherence to these rules, and 
uses his great opportunities to increase his own influence, or 
pursue aims not shared by his colleagues, then, unless he is pre- 
pared to advise their dismissal, he not only departs from rule, 
but commits an act of treachery and baseness. As the Cabinet 
stands between the Sovereign and the Parliament, and is bound 
to be loyal to both, so he stands between his colleagues and the 
Sovereign, and is bound to be loyal to both. 

As a rule, the resignation of the First Minister, as if removing 
the bond of cohesion in the Cabinet, has the effect of dissolving 
it. A conspicuous instance of this was furnished by Sir Robert 
Peel in 1846 ; when the dissolution of the Administration, after it 
had carried the repeal of the Corn Laws, was understood to be 
due not so much to a united deliberation and decision as to his 
initiative. The resignation of any other Minister only creates a 
vacancy. In certain circumstances, the balance of forces may 
be so delicate and susceptible that a single resignation will 
break up the Government ; but what is the rule in the one case 
is the rare exception in the other. The Prime Minister has no 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 39 1 

title to override any one of Iiis colleagues in any one of the 
departments. So far as he governs them, unless it is done by 
trick, which is not to be supposed, he governs them by influ- 
ence only. But upon the whole, nowhere in the wide world 
does so great a substance cast so small a shadow ; nowhere is 
there a man who has so much power, with so little to show for 
it in the way of formal title or prerogative. 

The slight record that has here been traced may convey but a 
faint idea of an unique creation. And, slight as it is, I believe 
it tells more than, except in the school of British practice, is 
elsewhere to be learned of a machine so subtly balanced, that it 
seems as though it were moved by something not less delicate 
and slight than the mainspring of a watch. It has not been the 
offspring of the thought of man. The Cabinet, and all the 
present relations of the Constitutional powers in this country, 
have grown into their present dimensions, and settled into their 
present places, not as the fruit of a philosophy, not in the effort 
to give effect to an abstract principle ; but by the silent action 
of forces, invisible and insensible, the structure has come up 
into the view of all the world. It is, perhaps, the most conspic- 
uous object on the wide political horizon ; but it has thus risen, 
without noise, like the temple of Jerusalem. 

" No workman steel, no ponderous hammers rung; 
Like some tall palm the stately fabric sprung."' i 

When men repeat the proverb which teaches us that " mar- 
ria"-es are made in heaven," what they mean is that, in the most 



1 Heber's " Palestine." The word " stately " was in later editions altered by the 
author to " noiseless." 



392 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

fundamental of all social operations, the building up of the 
family, the issues involved in the nuptial contract, lie beyond 
the best exercise of human thought, and the unseen forces of 
providential government make good the defect in our imperfect 
capacity. Even so would it seem to have been in that curious 
marriage of competing influences and powers, which brings 
about the composite harmony of the British Constitution. 
More, it must be admitted, than any other, it leaves open doors 
which lead into blind alleys ; for it presumes, more boldly than 
any other, the good sense and good faith of those who work it. 
If, unhappily, these personages meet together, on the great arena 
of a nation's fortunes, as jockeys meet upon a racecourse, each 
to urge to the uttermost, as against the others, the power of the 
animal he rides ; or as counsel in a court, each to procure the 
victory of his client, without respect to any other interest or 
right : then this boasted Constitution of ours is neither more 
nor less than a heap of absurdities. The undoubted competency 
of each reaches even to the paralysis or destruction of the rest. 
The House of Commons is entitled to refuse every shilling of 
the supplies. That House, and also the House of Lords, is 
entitled to refuse its assent to every bill presented to it. The 
Crown is entitled to make a thousand Peers to-day and as many 
to-morrow : it may dissolve all and every Parliament before it 
proceeds to business; may pardon the most atrocious crimes; 
may declare war against all the world ; may conclude treaties 
involving unlimited responsibilities, and even vast expenditure, 
without the consent, nay, without the knowledge, of Parliament, 
and this not merely in support or in development, but in rever- 
sal, of policy already known to and sanctioned by the nation. 



KIN BE YOND SEA. 



393 



But the assumption is that the depositaries of power will all 
respect one another ; will evince a consciousness that they are 
working in a common interest for a common end ; that they will 
be possessed, together with not less than an average intelli- 
gence, not less than an average sense of equity and of the 
public interest and rights. When these reasonable expectations 
fail, then, it must be admitted, the British Constitution will be in 
danger. 

Apart from such contingencies, the offspring only of folly or 
of crime, this Constitution is peculiarly liable to subtle change. 
Not only in the long run, as man changes between youth and 
age, but also, like the human body, with a quotidian life, a peri- 
odical recurrence of ebbing and flowing tides. Its old particles 
daily run to waste, and give place to new. What is hoped- 
among us is, that which has usually been found, that evils will 
become palpable before they have grown to be intolerable. 

There cannot, for example, be much doubt among careful 
observers that the great conservator of liberty in all former 
times, namely, the confinement of the power of the purse to the 
popular chamber, has been lamentably weakened in its efficiency 
of late years ; weakened in the House of Commons, and weak- 
ened by the House of Commons. It might indeed be con- 
tended that the House of Commons of the present epoch does 
far more to increase the aggregate of public charge than to 
reduce it. It might even be a question whether the public 
would take benefit if the House were either intrusted annually 
with a great part of the initiative, so as to be really responsible 
to the people for the spending of their money ; or else were 
excluded from part at least of its direct action upon expendi- 



394 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

ture, intrusting to the executive the application of given sums 
which that executive should have no legal power to exceed. 

Meantime, we of this island are not great political philoso- 
l^hers ; and we contend with an earnest, but disproporlioned, 
vehemence about changes which are palpable, such as the 
extension of the suffrage, or the redistribution of Parliamentary 
seats, neglecting wholly other processes of change which work 
beneath the surface, and in the dark, but which are even more 
fertile of great organic results. The modern English character 
reflects the English Constitution in this, that it abounds in para- 
dox ; that it possesses every strength ; but holds it tainted with 
every weakness ; that it seems alternately both to rise above and 
to fall below the standard of average humanity; that there is no 
allegation of praise or blame which, in some one of the aspects 
of its many-sided formation, it does not deserve; that only 
in the midst of much default, and much transgression, the 
people of this United Kingdom either have heretofore estab- 
lished, or will hereafter establish, their title to be reckoned 
among the children of men, for the eldest born of an imperial 
race. 

In this imperfect survey, I have carefully avoided all refer- 
ence to the politics of the day and to particular topics, recently 
opened, which may have undergone a great development even 
before these lines appear in print on the other side of the Atlan- 
tic. Such reference would, without any countervailing advan- 
tage, have lowered the strain of these remarks, and would have 
complicated with painful considerations a statement essentially 
impartial and general in its scope. 

For the yet weightier reason of incompetency, I have avoided 



KIN BEYOND SEA. 395 

the topics of chief present interest in America, including that 
proposal to tamper with the true monetary creed which (as we 
should say) the Tempter lately presented to the Nation in the 
Silver Bill. But I will not close this paper without recording 
my conviction that the great acts, and the great forbearances, 
which immediately followed the close of the Civil War form a 
group which will ever be a noble object, in his political retro- 
spect, to the impartial historian ; and that, proceeding as they 
did from the free choice and conviction of the people, and 
founded as they were on the very principles of which the multi- 
tude is supposed to be least tolerant, they have, in doing honor 
to the United States, also rendered a splendid service to the 
general cause of popular government throughout the world.^ 



1 [In reply to the intended work of Mr. Adams on the Constitution of the United 
States, Mr. Livingstone, under the title of a Colonist of New Jersey, published an 
Examination of the British Constitution, and compared it unfavorably as it had been 
exhibited by Adams, and by Delolme, with the institutions of his own country. In 
this work, of which I have a French translation (London and Paris, 1789), there is 
not the smallest inkling of the action of our political mechanism, such as I have 
endeavored to describe it. On this subject I need hardly refer the reader to the valu- 
able work of Mr. Bagehot, entitled, "The English Constitution," or to the Constitu- 
tional History of Sir T. Erskine May. — VV. E. G., December, 1878. 



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